This Years Love
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: Postrescue fic. It was nothing more than a simple bet. Don't fall in love with each other. But when you're living under the same roof, how easy can it be not to? Jate.
1. Always Wishes

**Okay, people over at Lost Forum may have started to read this one. In the summary it mentions that Jack and Kate embark on the challenge to remain just friends for a whole year, but, just to warn you, this doesn't come into the story until a little while. Yes, this is gonna be a long one. It's going to be very sweet, very loving, and hopefully, you'll all like it. This is also a similar idea I'm thinking of having a go at for a Greys Anatomy fic, but I want to do it for Lost first.  
Love always  
Sam  
Xxxx**

**p.s. There is going to be a big significance with all the quotes that are appearing, which has a link in Kate's past that we will learn about.**

Chapter 1: Always Wishes

_Where there is great love, there are always wishes  
Willa Cather_

Rescue had come a year to the anniversary of their landing there. At sunrise on the 22nd September 2006, they were all awakened, both on the beach and at the caves, by the sound of a plane flying over. At first, they had been in a state of shock for a few minutes, wondering whether the brief flyover had been a figment of the imagination that had long since given up on planes, but then they stepped into place, flagging the plane down. It landed on the beach, bringing with it two pilots and a representative from Oceanic, who were surprisingly still running for business. Some survivors had headed up to the caves, to tell the few that still stayed there, but they had heard the plane, and were already packing by the time that the small group had arrived there.

Jack had arrived on the beach, and looked around at the people who had followed him like he was some great leader for the past twelve months. They were all running around, collecting up the belongings that they wanted to take with them. He looked around him, trying to spot out one person in the crowd, but not finding her. Charlie and Claire were standing together, Charlie holding onto all of their belongings, which fit together in on bag, save for his guitar, which was slung over his shoulder, and Claire was holding a ten-month-old Aaron. Sun and Jin were standing similarly, with only one bag between them, and their one-month-old baby daughter Jaena. Hurley was gathering up the last of his things, and Jack noticed that he was slipping one of Libby's shirts into his bag. Eko was standing before his church, which he had eventually finished, admiring his handiwork for the final time. Sayid was standing along at the graves, looking down at Shannon's resting place, saying his goodbye to her, glad that he wasn't leaving her alone, but rather, with her brother. Vincent was running around barking, he was going home with Hurley, who had taken up care of the dog after Michael and Walt never returned back to the island ten months ago. After the Others had seen them off on the boat, no one ever saw them again. Either they had made it back to civilisation, or they had fallen victim to the sea.

There! There she was. He finally spotted his dark-haired beauty standing on the shoreline, her feet dug up to her ankles in soft sand. Her backpack was a little way up the beach from her, but still unmistakably hers. He could see from the distance that her hand was balled into a fist, and knew that her toy airplane resided inside of it.

He made his way over to her, wondering whether there was a way to change what was inevitably going to happen. She was probably looking at freedom for the last time in a while. Many times, the two of them had talked over the situation, wondering whether there was some flaw in the system which would allow her to get off without a sentence. However, the only solution they had been able to come to where she wouldn't go to jail was going back on the run, and she insisted over and over again that she wouldn't hide from the world anymore.

He respected her for that, but more than anything, he was proud of her. He had offered to hide her in his house, but it was Kate who pointed out that it was unlikely they would get her through to LA without someone recognising her. If they knew she was on the run, the officials would be stationed there waiting for her. Then he had suggested buying a place in Sydney, or wherever it was they were first taken to, but she still had turned his offer down. She had been running for too long, and needed to face up to what she had done.

He had stood on the shoreline with her for perhaps twenty minutes before the plane, which was flying small groups of eight between the island and a ship just off the horizon, started badgering them to get on board. They took their names, and when Kate gave her full name (he hadn't realised that her name was Katherine until then), she was told that the Marshalls were waiting for her on the boat. All she had done was nodded, and proceeded to get onto the plane.

She sat beside Jack, who had looked more upset than she had seen him in a long time for the whole journey. She knew that he had wanted to keep her safe, to keep her with him, but running wasn't something she had in her system anymore. She had gotten too used to being in one place, with familiar people. Explaining her past to the closest people - Jack, Sun, Claire and Sawyer - had made her come to terms with it before. Sawyer, who had been deported from Australia, offered to run with her, to keep her on her toes, but she politely declined. She couldn't do it anymore. She hadn't done it for a year, and already she had lost the will. She enjoyed having friends, people that cared about her, and for the first time in her life, she had been attached to people who had actually felt the same way back towards her.

The way back to the ship had been silent, neither her nor Jack knowing what they could possibly stay to each other. In the last year, they had come to know everything about each other. She had told him about Wayne, Tom's death, and the childhood she'd rather forget, and in return had learnt about his relationship with his father, his marriage to Sarah, and the childhood he'd wished he'd had. Over the past twelve months they had formed a strong relationship. Best friends from early on, they always depended on each other more than anyone else. They had a rocky patch where it was uncertain whether they wanted to be friends or lovers, but in a time and place where neither could bear to lose someone else that they loved, they decided that they would remain friends.

So now, with goodbye only minutes away, they could silently understand that neither of them wanted that ending to come between them. As the plane came to a halt on the cleared deck of the ship, they remained in their seats whilst the other six passengers clambered out onto the boat, glad to see something civilised that wasn't a replica made of coconuts and bamboo.

Jack turned to her, which meant that he blocked her way out of her seat. "I don't want to lose you." He told her quietly, so that the two pilots and the Oceanic representative couldn't overhear what he was saying to her.

She looked at him, giving him a sad smile. "I'm going to jail, Jack." She pointed out to him.

It was unavoidable now. Several feet away from the plane, the Marshalls were gathering, waiting to arrest her. She was going to be taken away from him, and he wasn't going to be able to do a thing to stop it. Neither of them had wanted to lose another person that they loved, and now they were going to.

"After you get out," He started, bracing himself for Kate to tell him that she wasn't getting out, but the blow didn't come, "I'm still here for you." He reminded her. "My door is always open."

"Always?" She asked, clinging to the hope that she might get out earlier than she thought. "Even when you've gotten married and had kids behind your white-picket fence?" She tested, a small smirk upon her lips.

He let out a gentle laugh, shaking his head. "It'll be nailed open for you, Kate, but I doubt you'll have the rest of that scene to greet you."

She returned his sad smile. "Thank you."

"I mean it, Kate." He said, knowing that she'd acknowledge his offer but beg for her own independence. "I'm always here."

"I know." She nodded. "Don't wait for me." She said, and he gave her a strange look. "I know I told you that if we ever got rescued I wanted to vet any potential girlfriends for you, but don't wait for my approval."

Remembering that night by the campfire not that long ago, he let himself laugh again. He couldn't believe that she was seconds away from being taken away from him, and twice he had been able to laugh, when for the rest of the plane journey he had barely been able to breathe. "Okay." He said to satisfy her, even though he had no intention of getting another girlfriend any time soon. "But I'm not marrying her, not unless I've got you to be my best man."

"I can't be your best man, I'm a girl." She pointed out.

"You can be my best girl then." He decided. "Either way, I'm not getting married without my best friend being there."

She smiled, and leaned forward in her seat, putting her arms around his shoulders. Bringing him into a fierce hug, the pair of them clung to each other whilst awaiting their fate. He held her like she might not be taken from him if she just held on, because he had seen her every day for the past year, and wouldn't know how to take the day without the morning hug from his best friend to get him going.

They broke apart, and she stood up in her seat. He followed suit, and she reached for his hand, and with her head held high, they left the plane, touching down on the solid ship deck. They both spotted the Marshalls making their way towards her, and she turned to him.

"Bye Jack." She said with a smile, even though he saw that her eyes were brimming with tears. She released his hand, taking it in both of hers instead and pressing something into his palm. He didn't look at it because he couldn't take his eyes away from hers.

"Please, don't do this." He begged of her. "Don't leave me."

"Don't forget about me." She countered.

"How can I forget my best friend?" He said simply.

She leaned up on her tip-toes and planted a kiss on his cheek. The last time she had kissed him had been in the jungle, and she had ran away afterwards. Jack was surprised to admit that the touch of her lips against his skin felt familiar to him, although he knew that he like it more than he wanted to admit, more than he was allowed to admit. The reason they weren't acting on any feelings and not talking about them was because of this moment, where they would lose each other. That didn't stop them feeling though, it only made it harder.

"Katherine Austen." The head Marshall announced, stepping closer to her.

"Bye Jack." She repeated. "Thank you."

"I'll miss you." He whispered to her.

She gave him the sad smile again, and turned to the Marshalls. She didn't resist when they placed the handcuffs on her wrist, and recited her rights to her. It was familiar to a life that she didn't lead anymore. Even the Marshalls were surprised that she wasn't putting up a fight, especially when they had heard stories about the woman who had evaded police capture for three years.

He finally tore his eyes away from her, unable to bear the image of his best friend being carted away from him. He felt the presence of whatever she had placed into his hand, and looked down into his palm. The Plane. Tom's plane. Her plane.

That had been the last time he had seen her. When they returned to civilisation, back to Sydney, the survivors had been given rooms in a hotel whilst they got their lives reorganised. Everyone, it seemed, was staying in Sydney, particularly Charlie. He had previously lived in London, but was choosing to remain in Sydney so that he could be with Claire, and also his brother, Liam and his family. He decided that it was time to built a proper relationship with his brother and niece, as well as the boy had come to know him as his father. Claire was also pleased to be close to her family again, who was pleased to see both mother and baby happy, particularly when Claire had been on the plane to put the baby up for adoption.

Hurley was pleased to hear that his mother was doing well and when she had arrived in Sydney to see him, she had given him a lecture about the safety of airplanes. She had also informed him that because of the lack of money being drawn out of his bank, his interest combined with the money that his stocks were worth had multiplied his lottery winnings. He was now worth $410 million dollars.

Sun and Jin were returning to Korea for a short while to introduce Jaena to their families, and to bridge the rift between the two sets of in-laws. Being on the island had been the most effective form of marriage reconciliation that could have worked for the pair, particularly with baby Jaena as well. After visiting their families, they were returning to Sydney to stay with their friends.

Sayid, however, was going to Los Angeles, with the information given to him by the CIA before the crash. He was going to seek out Nadia, after all of these years, hoping that she hadn't moved on anywhere else. If she had moved on, he had the means and the information to find her. Although he gradually moved on, he never really got over losing Shannon, and knew that seeing all of his friends go home without them being there was too hard. It had been he who explained to Sabrina Carlyle that her son and step-daughter were dead. She had been upset for both of them, which Sayid knew that Shannon would be pleased to know.

Jack's mother had come to Sydney when she learnt that her son was alive. Once she had arrived, they held a funeral for Christian, something that Jack had needed to do for a year. Several people had accompanied him, Claire and Charlie in particular. Claire's mother, Lindsay, had joined them at the wake afterwards, so that there was more than just Jack and his mother there, and there it was revealed that Jack and Claire shared the same father. It was awkward to see Lindsay and Margo together in the same room at first, but then they both joined together to point out the similarities between Jack and Claire, how they both had qualities of their father. Claire and Jack spent their time talking a little more about their childhoods, getting to know the things they should have known, and then once Jack had quite a bit more to drink, he gave Charlie a 'talking to' about dating his baby sister.

It was strange, that with rescue, he had gained so much. He had reformed his relationship with his mother. Without Christian between them, they talked over all their problems and were now getting on much better. He had gained a sister, and a nephew, all the time people he had known to be friends. What had once been a simple nickname of 'uncle Jack' to baby Aaron, now held literal meaning. He really was the child's uncle. From the look of Charlie's relationship with Claire, he would soon have a brother-in-law as well, considering the jumpiness which Charlie had exhibited when Jack caught him longingly glancing at a jewellery store a few days before.

He had only lost one thing, one person, and that was still hitting him hard.

Kate.

Everyone noticed the difference. They had become something like a team of superheroes. 'Jack and Kate' - strong together, always happy to be near each others, best friends until the end. But apart, they were simply 'Jack' - Ex-doctor with a tendency to over-worry, and 'Kate' - the most warm-hearted criminal ever imaginable. They all knew that out of all of her friends, her arrest would hit Jack the hardest.

He spent most of his time out with his mother, or bonding more with Claire and Aaron, or drinking with Sawyer and Charlie, but every other minute of his time was spent thinking of her. Usually, when he got a free moment, he had to think of her, because it was her who was dragging him down the beach for a day of relaxation away from his worries. Somehow, whenever he let himself go and take his mind off of patching people up and making them feel better, she was at his side, and he had come to enjoy the fact that she never really left it.

Suddenly, he was going into a hotel room and hearing silence. He didn't hear her smarmy comments about being so uptight all the time. He didn't hear her laughing at him whilst his attempt to climb a tree ended up with him on the ground sprouting out many different curse words. He didn't hear her ever so quietly trying to sneak up on him when he could hear her from miles away because he knew how she moved. He didn't even hear her sighs that came every so often when she slept only about ten feet away from him. No, instead he had an empty bed, not the sight of her sleeping, peaceful face, or her gently heaving back that moved with her breathing. He couldn't turn a corner and see her there, that surprised smile on her face that told him that she hadn't expected to see him there - the same one that she'd given him in the shower once.

Every time he saw flowers, he thought of her. It reminded him of all the times he'd stumble across her working with Sun in her garden. At first, they had just grown fruits, and then some herbs once they had been receiving the regular food parcels (the privilege of seasoning had been lovely), but when they still had more space in the garden, they grew flowers. Once, Jack had trekked near enough to the other side of the island, right near the line they weren't supposed to cross, to collect seeds for a scarlet coloured flower. He hadn't known what it was called. Sun could pronounce the name in Korean, but not in English, and they couldn't remember what it was in Korean.

They had christened it themselves, giving it a new name, or rather, Sun had. Sun suggested that the flower should be named after them, because they were the ones who went in search of the seeds, so they had tried out different names for it. The Jack and Kate Flower just sounded silly, merging their surnames to create the word 'Shausten' hadn't worked out much better either. They tried it with their first names, but only came out with 'Kack', until Sun had reversed it, and pointed out that the 'Jate' flower sounded much better.

Every time he had seen her in that garden, she would be tending to those flowers, usually humming a tune to herself as she did so. It was always the same tune as well, but he never knew which one it was. He wanted to ask her, so that he could know the song rather than just the tune, but the foremost part of his mind wanted to remember the simple humming that she had introduced it as, rather than the words which he didn't know.

Another thing he had thought about was consulting a florist about the real name of their flower, but just as he was about to enter the florists he reminded himself that there was really no use. The flowers on the island were watered regularly, whereas he was only going to put them into a glass of water, refilling the glass until the flowers inevitable wilting came around.

Her trial hadn't been open, so he couldn't attend it, and he had spent four weeks searching down what jail she had been taken to, and had arrived there to see her only to be told that she wasn't allowed visitors. He only knew that she had been put away for ten years, and that was because it was broadcast on the news. That had been the hardest week for him, because every newspaper he picked up was plastered with her face, and whilst he hated to read about the unjust way they talked about her, he just needed to see her face, even if it was a tiny black and white photograph in the middle of a news column. After that, he had stopped picking up newspapers. He had no use for them, not at the moment. His life was a mess as it was, he didn't need to be reading strange stories about people who were suing one person for something whilst sleeping with the other persons lawyer - things like that were no use to him.

So, he went on with his life as best he could - without Kate.

He brought a house just in the suburbs of Sydney. He had chosen to stay there to be near his friends, and his newly discovered family. He went back to LA for a week, to sort out the immediate sale of his house, and to bring his belongings back to Australia. His mother also moved, getting an apartment only a ten minute drive from his new house. It was a large house, brought with the compensation from Oceanic, but he didn't need the four bedrooms. He just needed something to do with the money. Strategically, he had picked the other side of the city from the jail where Kate was. He needed to be close to her still, at least in the same city, but he couldn't deal with driving past that building knowing that she was in there and he couldn't get to her.

He was just as close to Claire and Charlie as he was to his mother. They also lived in the suburbs. Claire had previously been living with her mother, but it quickly became too crowded in the two-bed roomed apartment with Claire, Lindsey, Charlie and Aaron all under the one roof. They had moved into a house together, the three of them, into a nice three-bed roomed house. They had turned one of the bedrooms into a playroom for Aaron, and used the remaining spare room for Charlie to use as a music room. He wanted to get back into writing, but as a solo artist so that he was away from the temptations he had with the band.

Jack had gotten himself a job at the Sydney City Hospital, but wasn't working the long hours like before. He enjoyed having time to himself now, to spend time with his friends and family that had previously all combined into the hospital at LA. He now worked as a GP, which meant that he had set hours, 9am until 5pm.

Just like Kate had asked him too - he had gone on without her.


	2. Great and Small

Chapter 2: Great and Small

_Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.  
Comte DeBussy-Rabutin_

It was the first of December when he had walked into his wing of the hospital with a strange feeling about the day. Something inside of him had been jumping when he had woken up, and it hadn't stilled with his morning coffee, so he was starting to think that the caffeine boost had only added to whatever he was anticipating.

He worked in the surgery with two other doctors, Tim and Luke, who had both worked there since getting there medical degrees. The opening Jack had taken, however, was for working with the children patients, something that he much enjoyed. He even had the cliché drawer of candy in his desk to give to them when they had been good. Complete with working in a small practice came the two receptionists. One of these was a middle-aged woman named Maggie, a single mother who seemed to make it her duty to look after Jack. She said that he seemed like the type who didn't look after himself, so she was always bringing him regular cups of tea instead of coffee, and even a plate of biscuits "to keep him smiling", she claimed. The other receptionist was a younger woman, Clara, who had just graduated from college. She had trained to be a hairdresser, but decided that it wasn't for her.

The two women kept him on the straight and narrow, making sure that he was never there after hours unless a patient had called with an emergency. He definitely got more job satisfaction working with the children. There was never the pressure to race against time, or to have to be the doctor at time of death. All that was involved was writing prescriptions, easing a worrying parents mind, and giving the children a reason not to be afraid of doctors.

But on the first of December, he walked in to find a chocolate advent calendar placed on his desk. He let out a laugh to himself and stepped back out of his office to Maggie and Clara. "Is this a sign that I need to get you both Christmas gifts?" He asked them.

"Or you could always take your dazzling assistants out to dinner at a nice restaurant." Clara suggested, causing Maggie to laugh. Clara was always the glamorous one, wanting the expensive gifts from her boyfriend, seeing as she was still little more than a teenager, whereas Maggie, whose life doted around her five-year-old son, Jordan, enjoyed the simpler things in life.

He went back into his office, and soon after, Maggie brought him in a mug of steaming tea. "No coffee?" He asked, like he did every morning.

"You drink enough coffee before you get here." She told him, like she did every morning, and then came back two minutes later with a packet of chocolate biscuits.

"Chocolate? Oh, Maggie, you spoil me." Jack laughed.

She gave him an amused look. "Jordan's in Christmas mode, I guess it's rubbed off." She shrugged. "You're lucky I haven't decorated your office in tinsel."

Somehow, Jack knew that this joke would probably turn into a real action judging from what Tim and Luke had told him about the previous Christmas's that Maggie had worked there.

He sat at his desk, looking around him, having a quiet moment with his tea and chocolate biscuits before he started his paperwork. His eyes fell onto the photo frame beside the computer. The only picture he had of him and Kate. Someone had snapped it with a disposable camera, and Claire had gotten copies made for everyone, because they were all in there somewhere. It had been taken one sunset, when they were all sitting together. They were both laughing hard at something, and because of that, she was leaning on him somewhat, and he had his arm around her shoulders. A little girl had once looked at the picture and asked if that was his wife. He laughed, gave her a lolly, and told her that it was his best friend. She told him that boys and girls weren't allowed to be best friends unless they were in love too. He had given her another lolly, and seen her on her way with her mother for her medicine.

He'd had to explain to Maggie and Clara, who remembered Kate from the news, that they were just friends, and not lovers. Unfortunately, the news footage they had seen was the two of them holding hands, getting off the plane, and her kissing him on the cheek before she was arrested, so they hadn't been all that convinced. Just as he was staring at the photo, Clara stuck her head in through his open door. "Phone call on line one." She said airly. "Some guy who said to call him Hurley."

"Hurley?" He asked aloud, looking at the blinking on the phone. He hadn't heard from Hurley in weeks, mainly because he had been visiting his mother in LA and hadn't realised his friend was back yet. Clara disappeared, and he picked up the phone. "Hurley?" He repeated.

"Jack! Dude, great, I found you!" He said breathlessly down the phone.

"How was your trip to LA?" Jack asked.

"Doesn't matter. I've been trying to call you for a week." Hurley said.

"Why, is something wrong?"

"Dude, Kate got an appeal. She's being released from jail." Hurley said.

The biscuit that had been hovering over the tea snapped off and fell in crumbs. He had to stumble around to ensure that the mug didn't follow it onto the floor. "What?"

"Some lawyer heard her case, and went to court for her. He won, and they're letting her go, free of all charges."

"How do you know that?" Jack asked.

"She called me, asked me to pick her up from the jail."

Odd, why hadn't she called him? "When?"

"Today, man. 11am."

Jack looked at the clock. It was 9.30am. "Can you come pick me up on the way through?" He asked, standing up from his desk.

"Sure. We're all going. Well, me, Charlie, Claire. It'll be a squeeze in the car, but if there's no room, Kate can always sit on your lap." Hurley said, and Jack shook his head to himself - it never stopped.

He arranged a time to be outside of the hospital to meet Hurley, and then hung up the phone. He took a moment to recollect what had happened in the last three minutes. Kate was being released from prison. She was coming out. Ten years had become two and a half months. Of course, she couldn't have called him - he hadn't given her a number to call, but that still didn't explain how she got hold of Hurley. All that could wait - the only thing that mattered was that Kate was coming home.

He sped out of his office, and almost ran head on into the main desk. "Maggie." He said breathlessly, his heart still thumping with excitement. "I need you to clear my schedule for today."

"Well, I'd say its about time you took a day off, but why when you've been here for thirty minutes already?" She asked suspiciously.

"Kate's being released from prison." He said, smiling, and Clara's head bobbed up from a pile of paperwork.

"Oh, so you're going to tell her that you love her and have a slush reunion." She said, clapping her hands together.

Maggie shook her head at the youngster. "Girl, you read too many romance novels. He's not going to tell her that he loves her."

"Thank you, Maggie." Jack said, feeling like he was finally getting through to them.

"He's too stubborn for that." She added, and Jack rolled his eyes. Maybe he wasn't getting through to them. Sometimes, these girls really reminded him of Charlie and Hurley.

"Can you clear my schedule?" He asked again, when they seemed to have forgotten.

"No need." Maggie said. "Luke can do it." She checked the computer. "He's off this afternoon, and he's got a gap where you've got patients, so he can cover."

"Brilliant." He said, never being more pleased to be away from work. "Thanks."

"No problem." Maggie looked up at him from the computer finally. "Oh, Jack Shephard, look at you." She said. "Covered in biscuit crumbs."

He forgot that in his shock of Hurley's news, he had crushed the biscuit in his hands, and it was now covered all over his shirt. He brushed them off quickly, and then looked at Maggie. "Better?" He asked sarcastically.

"Much better. Now, what are you still doing here?" She asked him. "Go take that girl home."


	3. Falling In Love

Chapter 3:

_Falling in love can be hard, but falling out of love is even harder._

At quarter to eleven, he sat outside the jail with Claire and Charlie. Aaron was with Lindsey, which left the two of them to meet their friend without worrying about a fussy baby in the car. Hurley couldn't have been more wrong about the state of the car - they couldn't have been squashed with ten people in there, it was so big. Hurley had gone in to collect Kate.

Hurley had explained everything to Jack. He had read in the paper that another lawyer was fighting for an appeal, and had used his advantage of having a lot of money to find out the information he had needed. Eventually, he had gotten through, and had been allowed a visit, where he had given Kate a contact number for when the case went through. She had asked about Jack - constantly, but Hurley hadn't been able to give him much information.

Then, a week later, he had received the call from Kate that she was going to be released in seven days time - she had chosen another seven days rather than community service. Hurley arranged to meet her, and then she decided that she would go about finding Jack. Little did she knew that Hurley had done that for her, and that he was waiting for her.

Eventually, the doors opened, but he didn't need to raise his head, he was already watching the door for any signs of movement. He felt the same excitement brimming in him that he used to get on Christmas morning, with the presents right in front of him. The past few months without his best friend had been miserable for him, no matter how much he did to try and place her out of his mind, she was always there.

She hadn't seen him when she came out, she was talking to Hurley, and they would have to walk out of the parking lot and round a corner to get to where the three were standing by Hurley's car. She was thinner, he could see that from the distance, but other than that, and that her hair was a little longer, she hadn't changed a bit.

"What are the hotels around here like?" She asked Hurley on the way out.

"Why would you want to know that?" He asked her stupidly.

She gave him a strange look. "So I can find a place to stay…" She started, but Hurley cut her off with a laugh. "What?" She asked.

"Don't worry, Kate, I've found you somewhere to stay." He assured her.

She gaped at him. "Hurley, you didn't have to do that!" She told him. "You've already done so much, and-"

"Relax," He told her. "Don't worry, it's a nice place, and you're going to love your landlord."

"Really?" She asked hesitantly, wondering who in their right mind would want a recently released criminal living with them.

"Trust me." He nodded.

They turned the corner, and whilst she had been expecting to see Charlie and Claire there, the third person she hadn't. Her face broke into a grin, and she ran towards him. "Jack!" She said happily, near enough jumping into his arms. He lifted her off the ground a little when he caught her before setting her back on her feet again. God, it felt good to hold her after all this time. "Jack," She repeated. "What are you doing here?"

He smirked, pulling away from the hug to look at her. "Collecting my new tenant." He told her, and saw her smile. "I told you that there was always a place for you with me." He reminded her.

"It's so good to see you!" She said, still smiling at him.

"You too, but it'd be good to see more of you." Jack said, everyone around them raised there eyebrows, but Jack covered himself by referring to her body weight. "Look at you, you're so thin now."

"I'm fine." She said airily, brushing him off. "No big deal." It was a small-big deal, really. She would rather have eaten sand than eat the prison muck they were given, and what little she had eaten had reappeared soon after.

"Yes, big deal." Jack argued.

"Not anymore." She insisted. "I'll be eating something that hasn't been processed a thousand times and then crushed with a mallet."

He laughed, and shook his head, whilst Charlie piped up. "Well, I'm not so sure about the contents of Jack's kitchen. I mean, the cupboard stuff lasts, but the fridge." He caught Kate's eye and created the notion of slitting his neck with his finger, causing her to laugh.

"The contents of my fridge are fine." Jack defended. "If you're so worried about them, why do you help yourself every time you come over?"

Charlie looked innocent, shrugging. "Gotta test it out." He said simply.

"I've got to admit, Jack, your domestic ability is scary." Claire said, siding with Charlie. "When I look in the fridge I wonder whether the food will eat me first."

Jack look offended. "It's not that bad. Besides, you should be looking after your big brother."

Kate's eyebrows shot up. "Big brother?" She asked incredulously.

"Long story." They both said at the same time.

"I wanna hear this." She said, still shocked from the idea that the two of them were related.

Claire shook her head. "We'll explain in the car." She said. "We should get going, Mom's going out soon, so we should pick Aaron up."

"We'll grab him on the way." Hurley offered, rather than Claire needing to walk to Lindsey's. Claire nodded, and the lot of the piled back into Hurley's car. Kate sat in the back, between Claire and Jack whilst they explained the confusion of the pair sharing the same father. Kate sat with frowned eyebrows through it all, a look on her face that was accompanied by an "oooohhh!" at the end of it, when she finally understood.

Up front, Charlie and Hurley were in some deep discussion about the music Hurley was playing. Charlie was arguing that it needed to be played at a loud level to get the full effect, but when he went to demonstrate this to Hurley, the three in the back had yelled because there heads were right beside the speaks and it had almost deafened them. Hurley just insisted that the music was terrible, and was wondering whether a year away from civilisation had damaged Charlie's taste in music. This hadn't gone down to well when Charlie's CD was revealed to be Driveshaft's Greatest Hits.

They arrived at Lindsey's first, and Claire hurried in quickly to collect Aaron, coming back minutes later with the toddler in her arms. When she settled back into the car, Kate took Aaron onto her lap whilst Claire busied herself with the seatbelt. She was amazed at how much the boy had grown in the few months that she hadn't seen him. He blabbered away to her as if she could actually understand him, but with his recent development she had been able to understand a few words out of them. It was like he was telling a story. She would hear names every now again. "Ma-ma" "Da-ddy" "Ucoll Jack-Jack" "Urley" "Soya" and "Na-na".

Jack watched her whilst she focused on Aaron. She smiled at him, and the baby smiled back. He always had seen a strange beauty in her when she was around children. She was always beautiful, but there had always been something about Aaron and Jaena that had brought about a change in her. She was no longer the guarded, in-control Kate, but she became softer, and so protective that he couldn't help but admire her. He never knew what it was about seeing her around children that made her so much more amazing. Maybe it was awe in the amount of care she showed, or maybe it was a longing that he refused to admit to.

They arrived at Jack's house, and all of them got out of the car. Once they were outside, Claire took Aaron back, and Kate looked up at Jack's home. He saw her eyes widen slightly as he came to stand beside her.

"Jack…this place is huge." She told him, not taking her eyes off of it.

"More space than I need." He shrugged, admittedly. "But I guess I've got you to fill some of it now."

"Same with his heart…OW!" Charlie said, as Claire whacked him around the back of his head for his comment. "What did you do that for?" He asked her, but she gave him a look that shut him up.

Jack and Kate pretended that neither of them had heard his comment, and both weren't aware that the other had, and went on into the house. The first thing they did was give the tour, with Charlie and Hurley adding in lots of stories on the way about what had happened the past few months. She was amazed by the four bedrooms, and picked one out of the three to be her own room. The one she picked was the biggest remaining one, which just happened to be right opposite Jack's room, rather than further up the hall like the other two.

In the kitchen, she learned that yes, she was also shocked by the contents of Jack's fridge. He made lunch, and discovered the small disaster of Jack in the kitchen. Clearly he had lived off of the food provided at the hospital before the crash. Kate, who was hungry for anything, ate hers, and found that whatever it was wasn't half bad, but Charlie stared at it like he was afraid of it.

Jack noticed this, and gave him a reassuring look. "It's not going to bite you, Charlie."

"That's good." Charlie nodded. "Because I don't plan to bite it either."

An amused smile spread across Kate's lips, and she met Claire's eyes, silently backing her up on the domestic disaster of Jack Shephard.

The five sat together, with Aaron on Claire's lap, whilst they got Kate up to speed on everything that had been happening. She would have to get in touch with Oceanic to ensure that she got her compensation through, which had been put aside for her, and once it had gotten to the press that she had been released, people would probably want interviews with her, which she insisted straight away she was going to turn down because she felt bad enough about her past being out in the open, let alone with the whole world knowing. She couldn't deal with the people she didn't even know prodding for every detail.

She felt much better for being here. On her tour of the house, she realised how much everything just beamed of Jack. For some reason, everything she assumed his home would be like was true. It was professional, with that touch of messiness that came from being too absorbed in work to tidy after himself. The kitchen was glamorous, but rarely used, and its tidiness showed that. The spare rooms were all immaculate, because they were never used, as was his bed. She noticed that the new couch he had brought was already worn in though, so she assumed that most nights he slept on the couch. It looked like an extremely comfortable bed, though, so why didn't he sleep in it?

Could it be that after all of the time sleeping on an airplane chair bed, that he couldn't adapt to that particular part of civilisation? Or was it because the memories of sharing a bed with his wife were still too fresh? No, that couldn't be right - Sarah hadn't shared a bed with him for two years before the crash - and even Jack wouldn't go that long without sleeping in a bed, right?

What she loved most about the house was how much it made her feel at home. She had been there little more than an hour, and already she was relaxing into the place like she had been there just as long as Jack had. It was so warm and inviting - just like Jack himself. She did wonder, during her prison days, whether or not he would keep to his offer, but with Jack, she should have known better. He would have rushed around to make her feel welcome on his deathbed.

"So, Kate, what now?" Claire asked, when all the stories had been told.

She looked up from her coffee cup, slightly confused. "What do you mean?" She asked.

"Any plans now that you're home free?" The younger woman asked.

Kate thought this over. She had been so sure that her sentence would be long that she hadn't given any thought to the future. Sure, some people might think of that as giving up, but to her, it was a way of not getting carried away with hope. When she was younger, she never asked for anything, because she learnt that this way, she couldn't be disappointed when she didn't get what she had asked for. If she was planning a perfect life for when she was freed, she was sure to be disappointed in one way or another. After all, life is a risk, and it rarely works out well.

"Not really." She shrugged. "Just…carry on." She decided. Taking each day as it came seemed a hell of a lot easier than planning for the future. Why decide what to do tomorrow when she wasn't sure what tomorrow would bring?

"You must have some idea." Charlie tempted.

"Well…carrying on breathing does sound like a good idea…" She mused, getting some sarcastic laughs around the table. "Honestly, I don't know." She repeated.

"Do you want to go the whole nine yards?" Claire asked her. "Marriage, kids, white picket fence and a dog?"

Kate laughed a little into her drink. Wasn't that the exact life she hadn't wanted to intrude on for Jack? That lifestyle seemed to suit him, but whilst she had always dreamed of having it someday, it had never fit in with her situations. "I'm not so sure about that." She told them, her eyes meeting Jack's for some reason, and she didn't know why, but she quickly averted them.

"How come?" Claire asked, continuing with the strain of questions.

Kate shrugged. "First of all, I'd need a person, a fence, and a dog." She said, "None of which I have -" Charlie and Claire bit their lips to stop themselves from screaming Jack's name as a suggestion. "-and second of all, I don't really think it's for me."

"Of course it's for you." Claire insisted. "You're like, made for it."

"Nice to think so, but not true." Kate told them.

"Kate, you're the best babysitter I could ask for." Claire told her. "You're always picking up after everyone and making sure they're okay. You sure as hell can handle yourself in an argument that would suit for marriage. Okay, so you're stuck on the fence a bit, but you were always walking the dog in the jungle after Michael and Walt left."

Claire might have had a point, but she wasn't completely right. Kate opened her mouth to argue, but decided it was useless. The bubbly blonde seemed to have an answer for everything, and a question to match, so she decided on a simple shrug. "Well, we'll see I guess." She said, leaving a glitter of excitement in her friend's eye.

Claire, Charlie and Hurley left some time later, leaving Jack and Kate alone. It was the first time they had been alone together since the morning of the rescue, where they had stood together on the beach. They went into the living room, with fresh cups of coffee, and sat down on the worn-in couch. She noticed how easily Jack fell into a place on it, wondering how much time he actually spent sitting on the couch. They sat in silence for a moment, and then Kate spoke up.

"How did you know I was getting released today?" She asked him quietly.

"Hurley called me this morning." He revealed.

She nodded slowly. "I would have called you." She told him, fingering the bottom of her shirt in her fingers. "I wanted to, but I didn't have a number for you, and they weren't exactly helpful when I asked them to track you down." He guessed by 'them', she meant the guards, and nodded acceptingly. "I wanted to call you though." She repeated.

"It's all right." He smiled at her.

There was another small silence, and then she spoke up again. "I didn't ruin any of your plans, did I?" She checked, even though it was a stupid question, because if she had, they couldn't have helped it now.

He shook his head, glancing at the clock. 2pm. "No, I was at work."

She looked up at him. "Jack, you didn't need to leave work because of me!" She told him. "It wasn't that important."

"Relax." He told her with a smile. "This is the first day off I've taken since I started, and to be honest, I think I needed one. Besides, my best friend coming back is very important."

One thing that always amazed him was how they referred to each other as 'best friends' so often, in the same way that teenagers would. The term was so important to children, and at the same time, so important to them. Not only did it remind them of their boundaries, it also showed them just how much they valued the other person.

She smiled, accepting his answer knowing that deep down, he was just as stubborn as she was. "Where do you work now, back at the hospital?" She asked.

"Kinda." He shrugged. "I work in a practice now, as a GP."

"No more long hours then?"

"No." He confirmed. "That's the main difference, but its better. I'm working with children as well."

"What's it like compared to being a surgeon?" She asked. She had heard the stories from Charlie, Claire and Hurley, but wanted to hear what had happened with him. She wanted to hear what he would only tell her and not the others.

"Much better." He nodded. "Well, not always. I had to refer a kid for a meningitis scare to the main surgery, but it was just a scare. Its good going to work, knowing that you're not going to lose a patient."

She nodded, remembering how hard he took it when he lost a patient. Boone, for example - that had hit him pretty hard. They had all gotten to know each other by then, and she had seen Jack and Boone getting along nicely, and then he had died because he had tried to send a mayday call for them. It was hard for Shannon, particularly, but out of them all, it had hit Jack almost as hard as it had hit her.

He did enjoy working with the children. Children always said the best things, because they had innocence. When adults said 'it's complicated' to get out of explaining something, the child would take the facts they knew, and show them just how uncomplicated it could be. Everything was simple with children. They didn't care how sick they were, it didn't stop them playing football with their friends, or running around the house laughing. It was what children did. He was faced with worried parents everyday, who were concerned that their children were running around too much, making too much noise and putting themselves at risk of injury when they were hurt or sick, but listening to their 'horror stories' only made him see how much he wanted a house like that.

After a day of being around buzzing children, even if they were coughing, or had throats that were scratchy and sore, or had arms in casts, and bumped heads, they were still enthusiastic and loud. Going home was definitely the worst part of his day. First of all, because he was missing a particularly large part of his life, who was currently sitting on the couch with him, but also, because it was quiet. He would have spent eight hours listening to children's playful arguments and laughter, and wish that he could come home and have the same silence that he had once longed for filled with that sound. It was comforting, and signalled normality - something he thought he was entitled to now.

Kate sat and listened to his answers whilst she quizzed him over his new life. She learned about why he enjoyed his job so much, about the secretaries, Maggie and Clara, who were waiting to meet her because after he had mentioned her once, they had assumed they were getting married. Jack needed Kate to tell them herself that they were wrong otherwise they would never shut up about it. He assured her that there were no potential wives that she needed to meet, and definitely no potential girlfriends. She wondered why he hadn't even considered getting a girlfriend, but she didn't press it.

He couldn't explain why he had gotten such a big house, when she had asked. Even he didn't know that. The only thing he could think of was that he might as well spend the compensation that he had on a nice house. He started reeling of plans for the other two rooms. An office…a gym…maybe a room with a pool table in…

"Or a toy room." Kate suggested.

He raised his eyebrows. "Kate, I'm not five." He told her. "Why would I want a toy room?"

She laughed and patted his shoulder. "No, not for you." She told him. "I seem to recall that you have a nephew now." She reminded him.

"Yeah." He said with a smile. "Yeah, I do."

"A little something my auntie taught me." She said. "She didn't have any kids of her own, so she used to spoil me and my brother rotten. She was always buying us the things that my parents couldn't afford. When my Mom asked her why she did so much for us, she said 'Diane, I don't have kids of my own, the least you can do is let me spoil yours'." Kate smiled.

Jack was looking at her with a gentle frown, but not because of the story, because of something she had mentioned in it. She had shared countless stories about her past, and her childhood with him - some good, some not so good, but still, he thought he knew all of the major things. "You have a brother?" He asked her.

She looked away, her smile fading. "Had. I used to." She corrected sadly.

"What happened?" He asked her quietly, his hand subconsciously coming to rest atop of hers where she had lay it on the back of the couch.

She bit her lip, looking down into her lap again. "He…uh…he got sick." She told him, just above a whisper. "He died when I was ten. He was only thirteen."

His thumb stroked the top of her hand, gently smoothing over the soft skin. "I'm sorry." He told her.

She raised her head, giving him the best smile she could manage. "Yeah, I'm sorry too." She nodded. "But that's in the past now. I can't change it." She dropped her frowns for a smile again, and carried on talking. "So, anyway, you don't have any kids of your own." She pointed out, going back to her story. "Aaron would love coming round here knowing that he's got a load of things to do already here."

He nodded. "Good idea." He said "I'll get a bed put in for him as well, for when he stays over and stuff."

"See!" She said, patting his hand. "Now you're getting the hang of it. Now you've just gotta figure out what to do with the other room."

For some reason, he was hit with an image of Kate standing in the centre of the spare room, beside a crib. She held a baby to her chest, speaking quietly to it whilst she cooed over the child. The baby made soothing sounds in return, and both of them looked comfortable.

He shook himself. He couldn't have those sort of thoughts with Kate. Family planning thoughts? Jesus, that was almost as bad as having naughty thoughts about her. She was his best friend, he couldn't jump into those sorts of things. He couldn't even go near them with her. They had decided against it. It was for the better.

_But you're not going to lose each other now, _a voice in the back of his head told him. That was right. They hadn't formed a relationship with each other because they were afraid of losing one another when they were rescued, or even whilst they were still on the island. He couldn't possible lose her now. It wasn't like she was going to pack up and leave in the middle of the night. She was living with him, and he wasn't about to leave her on her own.

But still, he stopped himself from continuing that thought. Where had it even come from? Perhaps working with children was making him feel broody. Instead of telling Kate what he had thought about (because he didn't want her to kick his ass for it), he just smiled to himself. "I'm sure I'll think of something."


	4. Hope

Chapter 4:

_Sometimes you look so hard for hope, that you don't see it sitting right next to you._

Kate's eyes opened slowly. She looked around her, seeing that she was sitting on the couch in Jack's living room still. She silently swore to herself, rubbing the underneath of her eyes to wake herself up. She must have fallen asleep on his couch. God, that was bad. They were watching television together after dinner, and she had just fallen asleep. She hoped that she hadn't fallen asleep in the middle of a conversation. That would just be embarrassing.

The room was now filled with the soft light that came from the lamp beside the couch. Lifting her head from the back of the couch cushions, she realised that Jack wasn't in his seat anymore. He wasn't even in the room. Frowning softly, she wondered where he was. He had been sitting on the couch beside her, the last she could remember. Glancing at the clock beside the television, she saw that it was now ten o'clock. How long had she slept for? The last time she remembered looking at the clock it was a little after seven.

She ran her fingers through her hair as she sat up properly, and the sound of footsteps on the stairs behind her alerted her attention. She caught Jack's eye as he came into the room, and smiled sheepishly at him.

He gave her a smile. "Hey."

"Hey." She murmured back, slightly embarrassed. She couldn't believe she had just fallen asleep like that!

"I was just getting the bed made up for you." He told her, nudging his thumb in the direction of her new bedroom.

"Thanks." She nodded, fighting back a yawn and losing.

He laughed gently, and went over to her. Taking her arm gently, he raised her to her feet, and started to guide her out of the room. "Come on, you, time for bed."

"What? I get a curfew?" She asked him teasingly, and he let out another laugh at her tired voice.

"You do when you're this tired." He told her, guiding her up the stairs. Still feeling tired, she allowed him to guide her up the stairs. Truth be told, she was enjoying the feeling of his hands on her shoulders, firm, but still holding a gentleness that she had only ever known from him.

He took her into the bedroom, and sat her down on the bed. Immediately, she lay down on it, taking in the comfort from it that she had missed for a long time. She hadn't had a decent nights sleep on a good bed on the island, and she certainly hadn't had a good mattress in prison. But this…this was bliss.

"Mm…" She moaned when she lay on it, causing Jack to laugh. "This is fantastic." She probably would have sounded more appreciative and enthusiastic had she been more awake, but that could be solved in the morning.

"I'm glad you like it." Jack told her, nodding. "But you might want to put something more comfortable on to sleep in." He said, pointing to her jeans and shirt that she was wearing.

She looked down at herself innocently, and then looked back up at him. "I, uh…I don't have anything else to wear." She realised. She hadn't really brought anything back from the island other than her spare t-shirts, and they were the only clothes returned to her after being released other than her jeans and khaki combat trousers.

Jack smiled at her. "Wait here." He told her, before disappearing out of the room.

Kate waited, looking around the room she was in. It had nice walls, a calm peach colour. It reminded her of the pale island sands, and that comforted her somewhat. The carpet was a similar colour, just a fraction darker, and there were white sheets on the bed that she lay on. The duvet felt thick, and it was more than certainly unused. There were two pillows beneath her head, both new and fluffy so that her head sank into them on the impact.

Beside the bed on either side were beside tables, the one nearest her holding a lamp, and the one on the other side was bare. Both of them had drawers on, but when she looked, there was nothing inside them. She didn't know what she had expected to find in Jack's unused guest room, but still, temptation caused her to look. Across the other side of the room, opposite to the bed, was a large pine wardrobe that looked brand new as well. He must have brought all new furniture with his compensation money.

She had sat up again fully after discovering the empty contents of the drawers, and spotted a chest of drawers behind the door of the room. Also, she noticed the bedroom window, that had a window seat on it. She smiled at it, and went over to investigate. It had been decorated with painted wood underneath, and on top had a cushioned seat. She pulled back the closed curtain, figuring that Jack must have closed it earlier when making the bed up, and stared up at the night sky.

That was how Jack found her minutes later, sitting on the window seat, staring up at the empty sky with almost a longing in her eyes, a longing to share the same freedom as the stars that held her gaze. He wondered, if perhaps he was sitting right in front of her, that he might be able to see the sparkles reflected in her eyes.

He crossed the room, standing near the bed. "Here." He said, taking the pile of clothes in his hands and placing them on top of the covers. She looked over, jumping slightly at his voice, having not heard him enter the room. "It's okay." He told her, seeing her jump. "It's only me."

She smiled apologetically. "Sorry." She mumbled, getting up and going over to him. "Just…habit, I guess."

"It's okay." He repeated, still just as reassuring. When had their voices dropped to whispers? They both wondered. Jack gestured down to the pile of clothes he had placed on the bed. "There's just some t-shirts and sweat pants." He told her. "They should be okay until we can get you some more clothes."

She looked up at the mention of clothes shopping. "Jack-"

"If your money hasn't come through, I've got more than enough to spend." He assured her holding up his hands to show her that he wasn't taking 'no' for an answer.

She shook her head slowly. "You don't have to spend your money on me, Jack." She told him. "You've already done enough just letting me stay here."

"What are friends for?" He smiled, and a silence fell over the pair. Neither of them moved, and Jack finally realised why, and cleared his throat. "I'll, uh, let you get changed and, um, go to bed." He said backing out of the room.

"Jack?" She asked after him as he went to close the door behind him. He stopped, looking back into the room. "Thank you." She smiled at him.

He returned her smile, and held her gaze for a moment. She looked genuinely happy, like she did in the days before rescue came. He hated that his last memory of seeing her face was her scared, but proud, expression as she surrendered herself. Now, he was replacing that dark day with the happier ones, he hoped. After all, what could possibly go wrong now that she was back in his life again?

"You're welcome, Kate." He whispered, just loud enough for her to hear, and then he closed the door behind him.

He went down the hall, but instead of going into his bedroom, he returned downstairs. There, he turned the television off, and straightened out all the cushions on the couch. He went into the kitchen and cleared the drying up away from the meals earlier, replacing the plates and crockery back into the cupboards, and made himself a habit of things to do. It was only ten o'clock, and he wasn't even tired yet.

Even so, he needed to be back at work at 9am tomorrow. His first day off had been a well spent one, and even so, he was excited to be getting back to work tomorrow. He enjoyed seeing his patients, because to him, it was so much more rewarding to see a child's smiling, appreciative face, than an adults.

_Except maybe hers. _His mind told him. He shook the thought from his head, not wanting to elaborate it. Of course he was glad to see Kate's happy face. She had been through a tough time, and he had missed her, so it was a relief to see that she was okay and that prison hadn't broken her spirit. She was still the same Kate that he knew and loved.

_Loved? _No, that was a figure of speech. Knew and loved. Everyone said it, just as a passing phrase. It didn't mean anything. He might have called her a stupid woman in passing, whilst they were talking earlier. It didn't mean that he meant it. They had just been joking around, telling stories, and now, he was just joking around, right? That didn't hold any truth to it.

Replacing the last plate, he checked once over that the kitchen was clean. He didn't remember becoming so fussy about cleaning, but since he had returned from the island, there was something appealing about a nice tidy house, rather than a rambled tent in the sand, or a dirt-ridden cave. Making his way back through the living room, he noticed something shining on the ground. Frowning, he went over to the foreign object.

Kate's plane.

How had that gotten on the ground? He wondered. He remembered Kate pressing it into his palm on the day she was arrested, and he remembered looking at it the night he had moved into this house. He had fallen asleep on the couch that night, not bothering to make it up to his bedroom. That was the last time he remembered seeing it. It must have been caught in the couch cushions, or something, and had fallen out when him and Kate had been on there earlier. Or perhaps Kate had found it whilst he had been out of the room, and had put it into her pocket, and then it had fallen out when she had tiredly stumbled up from the couch. Either way, he took it in his hand, and went up the stairs again.

He noticed that the door to Kate's new bedroom was open now, and on his way past his bedroom, he poked his head around the door, making sure that everything was okay. She must have left the door open when she went to the bathroom or something. Whatever the reason, it was still open now, and she was fast asleep. Jack had to smile at how peaceful she looked.

The duvet covers were only half pulled up over her body, covering to just above her hips. The white sheets and blankets contrasted to the black shirt of his that she wore, and he couldn't see through the blankets, but from the smaller pile of clothes on the previously unoccupied bedside table, he saw that she was wearing some navy sweatpants of his as well. The shirt alone would have been enough to cover her completely, as it was a baggy one on him, and was clearly swamping her thin frame. Her face had a wash of relaxation all over it, particularly with her features facing towards the open window, which let in a soft breeze as well as casting moonlight over her skin. Her dark hair was spread out on the white pillow underneath her, and he noticed that in the moonlight, each of her freckles looked like tiny stars on her skin.

He left the window open for her so that the room didn't get too stuffy, and silently padded across the room. Beside the lamp, he placed the toy plane down on the surface of the table, and then looked back at her. Her lips were parted slightly, and he could see the gentle rising and falling of her chest where the blanket was pulled down. She was frightfully thin, he found himself thinking again. Shaking his head at her fragile body, he reached down, pulling the blankets further up her body. He didn't want her to get a chill from the night breeze she was letting in.

Settling the blanket over her shoulder, she snuggled under the new warmth, letting out a content sigh. He smiled again, watching her fondly. She hadn't lost any of her beauty since he had last seen her on the island. She still had that captivating charm that he always found himself surrendering too.

Before he realised what he was doing, he had leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. Taking a moment to panic, he accidentally let his lips linger on her skin for a moment, before he withdrew his touch and made way out of the bedroom again. He didn't look to see whether he had woken her up or not, but he did pause at the door when he considered this, drinking in the image of her still sleeping body.

Finally, he left the room, pulling the door partly shut behind him.


	5. Take Care

Chapter 5:

_A person is not grown up when they can take care of themselves, but rather, when they can take care of others._

Kate awoke the following morning feeling more comfortable than she had done in a long while. She curled herself into a ball, wrapping the thick blankets tighter around her so that she was shelled in luxury. Opening her eyes blearily, she caught sight of something beside her bed. Next to the lamp was a steaming mug of coffee, the aroma of it reaching her nose and making the morning so much more wonderful. Beside that was her toy plane. Tom's plane, rather.

She remembered giving it to Jack the last time she had seen him on the boat. Obviously, he had seen fit to return it to her. Smiling, she reached for the coffee, pulling herself up in bed and settling back against the headboard for a moment, taking in a sip of it. She sighed, letting the liquid warm her insides, before setting it back on the table whilst she got up.

She went downstairs in the oversized t-shirt and sweat pants that Jack had leant her last night, and sipped at her coffee as she did so. It was nice to have coffee with a flavour to it, rather than the cheap mix they had at the prison. Jack made lovely coffee. She could easily get attached to this special blend. In fact, she might have already been attached to it. See, easy.

Walking in to where she remembered the kitchen to be, she found Jack standing at the kitchen side, leaning over the newspaper he was reading. Beside him was a stack of envelopes, which he was ignoring, clearly post and bills, but some of them where coloured envelopes. She stood in the doorway of the kitchen, leaning against the frame whilst she watched him casually checking the eggs and bacon he was making. She wasn't sure how long she stood there for, but it was his voice that broke her out of her daze.

"I know you're standing there, you know." He said, and she laughed softly at being caught out.

She went and sat down at the table behind him, still holding her coffee in a mild death-grip, and smiled at him as he turned around. "Thanks for the coffee." She grinned, drinking some more. Yeah, she was definitely hooked on the stuff.

"No problem." He nodded. "So, what were you staring at?" He asked her suspiciously.

She caught his eye and shook her head laughing. "Don't get your hopes up, I wasn't staring at your butt, Jack." She told him.

He mocked disappointment, snapping his fingers together. "Oh, damn." He said dramatically. "There's me thinking you were checking me out."

"On the contrary." She corrected. "Seeing you being all domestic is… kinda weird." She told him.

"That's what happens when adults grow up and get their own houses." He told her, and then patted the top of her head, acting very condescending. "When you're a big girl, you'll find out."

"And until then, you're stuck with me." She shot back at him in a sing-song voice. "So, will you be sending me off to school, tying my shoelaces and taking me to the park if I'm good?" She asked him teasingly.

"No, you see, I've hired you a nanny already." He said, playing along with her game. "He's going to do all of that. He might even help you wash your hair in the bath as well, I'm sure he's willing to do that."

"He?" She questioned.

"His name's Sawyer." Jack told her with a wink.

Kate almost spat her mouthful of coffee out, and Jack laughed. The idea of Sawyer washing her hair in the bath was definitely creeping her out. "No thanks, I think I can fend for myself." She told him.

"Clever girl." He said, patting her on the top of her head.

"Will you stop that!" She said, trying to sound irritated but laughing.

He pointed a finger at her as the toast popped up from the toaster. "Don't make me ground you." He warned her.

"Oh, so I'll get punished for being bad then?" She asked, just on the off chance of seeing if she could make him blush.

He didn't blush. He turned to her, raised an eyebrow, and smirked. "I can always get your nanny to spank you." He suggested.

Kate looked horrified.

Jack laughed. "Don't worry. I'm not going to let Sawyer spank you." No, there was no chance of him allowing Sawyer to even think of the thought.

"Speaking of the Devil…how is Sawyer?" She asked.

Jack couldn't help but admit that he actually felt a tiny hint of jealousy when she asked about Sawyer, but he shook the feeling from himself. "I haven't heard much from him, actually. Last I heard he was visiting his family out in Tennessee." He shrugged. "Not heard anything since. He was only gone for a few weeks though."

He thought that she might ask more about Sawyer, and for some reason he got worried that she would want to contact him. He didn't know why, it wasn't like Sawyer was any threat to her. But instead, she simply shrugged and went back to her coffee.

He caught sight of the clock and swore, checking his watch at the same time to make sure that the dial hadn't stopped on the same time the night before.

"What's the matter?" Kate asked.

"I've got to be at work in twenty minutes." He said hurriedly.

"That's plenty of time." She assured him.

"It's a half hour drive." He laughed at her.

"Ah." She said simply, drinking some coffee. "Hurrying would be a good idea then."

He quickly gathered his briefcase and his jacket, and then rushed back into the kitchen. "Sorry I'm rushing off like this." He said, whilst shoving some medical papers quickly into his briefcase. "Help yourself to whatever you want for breakfast, and there's money in the dish by the door if you want to go out anywhere."

"Okay." She said, ten times more relaxed than he was. "What time will you be home?"

"About five-thirty depending on traffic." He said, and then stopped what he was doing. "I'm on my lunch hour at twelve, why don't you come meet me? We'll go out for lunch somewhere." He suggested.

Kate smiled, and nodded. "Children's ward, right?" She asked, checking where she would find him.

He nodded. "Children's ward at twelve." He confirmed.

"I'll see you then." She said.

"Oh, wait a minute." He said, and dug into his wallet. "Here you go." He told her as he extended his credit card to her. "Go shopping." He said with a smile.

"Jack, I told you-" She started, but he cut her off.

"If you don't want to take my money then you can always pay me back when your compensation comes through." He assured her, then caught sight of the clock again. "Damnit, sorry, Kate, I really have to go."

"Then go," She smiled, getting up and pushing him towards the door. "Go make sick kids smile."

He grinned at her, and then left, but not before forgetting his keys, which Kate threw across the driveway to him. He thanked her, and she stood in the doorway until she couldn't see his car anymore.

Then she caught sight of his credit card, when she walked back into the kitchen.

_Go shopping, _he had said.

---

When Kate walked into the children's ward later that morning, she asked at the main desk for Jack's office. She had been directed to the general surgery of the ward, and then came across another desk with two women sitting talking over a plate of biscuits and a cup of tea. She leaned on the counter as the older one stood to meet her.

"Hi, I'm looking for Jack Shephard." She said.

The woman eyed her for a moment, and Kate panicked, thinking that she had seen about her case on the news and was going to start thinking bad things of her, but then her eyes lit up. "Oh, you're Kate!" She said excitedly.

"Kate?" The younger receptionist asked, standing up also. "The woman in the picture?"

"Picture?" She asked, genuinely curious.

"Jack's in his office, check out the photo on his desk." The younger woman winked at her. "You should have seen him yesterday when he found out you were coming home."

"Like a kid at Christmas." The older woman confirmed. Kate wondered what he would really be like at Christmas…after all, it was only twenty-three days away. She suddenly worried…would he be out seeing his family? She had no one to visit, and if he did, she would probably end up sitting at home alone.

The pair guided Kate over to Jack's office, where she knocked, and then entered at his call. She wasn't at all surprised to see him sitting at his desk writing something down. He looked up when she entered, and he broke into a grin, having clearly thought it would have been a doctor walking in with some bad news that would make his day a living hell to work through. Instead, it was Kate, which mean two good things: Lunchtime, and Kate.

He caught himself staring at her. "You did go shopping then?" He realised, noticing her new outfit.

Kate looked down at herself and nodded. "Yeah, thought I'd get down to my feminine side." She said.

Jack had no trouble seeing her feminine side. She was wearing a brown, layered gypsy skirt that ended just below her knees, with a crème coloured top that matched it perfectly, even though it wasn't a set. The top had stitched patterns in the same chocolate colour as the skirt, and flowing sleeves that fanned out around her wrists. Complete with her new outfit was a necklace, tied with string, with a small spiral cut out of shell.

He had only ever seen her wearing jeans or trousers, so a part of him naturally assumed that she simply was made up of an upper torso, trousers, and shoes, rather than legs and feet. But now, he could clearly see that she had a very amazing set of legs, and rather cute feet as well, that was showed through her strapped sandals. When he realised that he was staring a bit to hard at her perfectly toned legs, he snapped his head up to hers again.

"What is it with guys and skirts?" She asked rhetorically. "Every time I wear one they react like they didn't think I have legs."

Funny, he thought, because that's exactly what he had been thinking. He stood up from his chair, and went around the desk to her, inviting her to sit down on the couch there beside him. "You just look good in a skirt, that's all." He told her. "And its definitely not a sight I'm used to seeing." He doubled back quickly. "But you do realise that you can't climb trees in that, right? That's just inviting guys to…you know…look." He told her.

She laughed, hitting him playfully on the arm, and then she stood up, crossing the room.

"Where are you going?" He asked her, when she sat down in his chair. She high-backed spinning chair completely swamped her tiny figure, and made her look like she was a child sitting on her fathers desk.

She started looking around. "Your lovely receptionist out there told me to look for the photo on your desk." She said. "Ah! Here it is." She announced, spotting the frame and picking it up in her hands. "Nice picture." She nodded. "We look like a pair of hyenas though." She laughed, noticing how insanely they were laughing.

"Well, according to the little girl who saw that picture once, we look like a married couple." He told her, waiting her eyebrows raise.

"What did you do?" She asked, curious as to what he had told the girl.

He shrugged. "Gave her a lollypop and saw her on her way with her mother." He said simply.

Kate laughed. "That sounds like denial to me, Jack." She teased.

"Oh, don't you worry, I set her right on that one." He said, remembering how he had told the girl that she was his friend, and nothing more, even though she hadn't believed him.

"Well, you know what they say about denial…" She said.

"Just a river in Egypt." He picked up, remembering a conversation they'd had with Hurley on the island once.

She pointed her finger at him whilst relaxing back in his chair, returning the photo to his desktop. "Don't let it fool you." She advised. "You can drown in a river as well as an ocean."

He gave her a strange look. "What? They give you philosophy classes in prison?" He teased.

They both laughed, but at the same time, Kate tried to look angry. "You're going to have to make up for that one, mister." She warned him.

"Hmm…" He thought over fakely, standing up and crossing over, his hands bracing his upper body as he leaned over the desk towards her. "How about I treat you to lunch?"

She scoffed. "As if I could be bought for such a low price." She said, putting on an airy voice and turning her head.

Jack smiled. "How about a million dollars? How's that for a price?" He asked her.

"A million dollars, huh?" She looked at him curiously.

He shrugged. "That's what you look like." He complimented her. She smiled despite herself, and they both laughed softly. He held out his hand to her. "Come on, I'm starving." He told her. She accepted his hand, and they left his office, only to be confronted by Maggie and Clara.

"And there's me thinking we'd never get to meet her in person." Maggie said, catching their attention.

Jack laughed, and led Kate over to the pair. "Guys, this is Kate. Kate, this is Maggie and Clara, my surrogate mothers…well, Clara more my annoying teenage sister than mother."

"Funny." She said, sticking his tongue out at her, and Jack raised his eyebrows to Kate, who nodded in agreement.

"I'll be expecting a mothers day card from you then, Jack." The older woman, Maggie teased him.

"You'll be getting one." He assured her. "Jordan's asked me to buy one for him."

Maggie laughed, and shook her head. Clara pointed an accusing finger on him. "Mothers day? It's Christmas first!!!" She reminded him. "Besides, I'm too young to be a mother."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Technically…you're not."

She waved a hand. "I don't do 'technically'."

Jack held his hands up innocently. "Well, don't come crying to me when you see two pink lines on a little white stick." He said, stepping backwards. "I'll be back at one. We're going for lunch." He said, bringing Kate back into the conversation just as he was planning on leaving it.

He was halfway down the hall before Clara called out to him.

"If you come back all flustered and doing your top buttons up, I'm taking a picture for blackmail!"

-----------------

"So, you had a busy morning then?" Jack assumed, leaning his elbows on the table.

"As busy as it can be for clothes shopping." She nodded.

Jack shuddered at the memory of enduring clothes shopping once, something he wasn't going to be reliving anytime soon. "Very, then."

She laughed at his obvious discomfort. "Don't worry, I didn't drag your credit card down too much." She assured him. "I only brought enough to last me."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "I hope you brought enough underwear, because as much as I can share t-shirts for you to wear to bed, I can't supply that."

Kate giggled into her bagel, and tried to swallow it without choking. "And there's me thinking you always wore female underwear." She teased.

Jack laughed, and tried not to give her any ideas of dressing up in women's clothing. "Don't worry, I don't think we'll have to do that kind of sharing." He promised her.

"Oh, Claire called this morning." She said.

"But she knew that I'd be at work?" He looked at her strangely. "She always calls me at work."

She hit his arm lightly, only playing around. "She called for me, silly." She told him. "Anyway, she wants us to go to dinner at theirs tonight."

"Tonight?"

"Yeah." Kate said. "She said that she's got some big announcement thing."

"Okay." He nodded. "Better than a night in doing nothing." Secretly, he wouldn't mind a night in with Kate again, after last nights had been so good, but it was probably going to be a good night with Charlie, Claire and Aaron. He hadn't seen his nephew since the previous weekend, and he now had the whole weekend to do nothing. So perhaps going for a drink at their house would be a good evening.

"I've got ten bucks says Claire's pregnant." Kate bet, causing Jack to choke on his coffee a little. It had been like this on the island, whenever someone had an announcement to make, they would spend a short time beforehand placing bets on what the announcement was. Only this time, it was about his baby sister. "Relax, Jack." She said. "She's had a baby before, you know."

"Yeah…but…." He couldn't actually think of a reason for what he was trying to say, so he gave up. "I see your ten bucks and raise you twenty bucks that Charlie's popped the question."

She raised an eyebrow at him, and then reached out her hand. He shook it, sealing their deal. "You're on." She said. "So, what's your back up?"

"I saw Charlie staring longingly into a jewellery store the other day." He revealed. "Yours?"

"Female intuition."

He tilted his head to one side. "How can you have female intuition about someone being pregnant when you've never been pregnant?" He asked her.

She raised her eyebrow at him. "Who says I've never been pregnant?" She asked him, shrugging her shoulders.

His eyes widened slightly. "Have you?"

She gave him a small but sad smile, finishing off the last of her bagel and reaching for her coffee. She nodded ever so slightly, cooling her warm drink with her breath and waiting for his reaction.

"What happened?" He asked her, and they both noticed how quiet and sensitive his voice had become since they had been joking around placing bets.

She drank a sip, and then waited for a moment. "I was too young, it wouldn't have worked out." She said simply.

Something inside of him wanted to pry further, but he could tell from the broken look that had appeared in her eyes that he was in dangerous territory already. She was going over the past, and it was hurting her. That was enough for him to stop questioning. He simply nodded, and then gave her a reassuring smile.

"I think you'd be a good Mom." He said after some thought, remembering his forbidden thoughts from the other night.

She looked up at him, some of the light returning to her eyes. "Nah, not me." She said with a smile. "I'm still a kid at heart myself."

"That's what'll make you good at it." He told her, then he smirked, lightening the mood again. "So, shall I expect to come home from work one day to find you putting painted handprints on the walls?" He checked.

She nodded cheekily. "Perhaps I'll start throwing my food around as well."

"As long as you don't wet the bed, I think we're okay." He said, causing her to laugh.


	6. Drunken Stumbles

Chapter 6:

_A drunk man's words are a sober man's thoughts._

They chose to walk back from Charlie and Claire's that night, instead of getting a cab home. They walked side by side down the street, their arms brushing against each other ever so gently. They didn't do anything about it, however, mainly because they'd had something to drink. They weren't completely drunk, so thankfully one of them wasn't staggering down the street, but they had drunk enough to become completely relaxed.

"I can't believe Claire's pregnant." Jack said for the fifth time they had started walking, and they had only been walking for five minutes. He was slightly more drunk than Kate, and she was starting to realise that he did say the strangest things when he's drunk.

"She's been pregnant before, Jack." Kate pointed out to him. But not also was Claire pregnant again, this time with Charlie's child, she was also engaged to Charlie, who had proposed the previous night.

"Yeah, but now...I know she's my sister."

"It could be worse." Kate said after a moment.

"Yeah?"

"Well, if it wasn't for Boone, you would have ended up delivering your sisters baby."

Jack's face twisted into some disgusted horror. The things he would have seen then...didn't bear thinking about. In fact, he tried to focus on anything but that. Hurley giving Sawyer a strip tease would be more aesthetically pleasing than...that.

"See." Kate said proudly, enjoying the look of contort horror on his face. "It can always be worse."

He gulped, still remembering the night of Aaron's birth. "Yeah...thanks for covering for me on that one."

"Well, I'm definitely not doing it again this time." She said. "She can go to a hospital and have drugs."

He nodded, agreeing with her. "I just can't believe that she's -"

"Okay, I get it!" She laughed. "Jeez...how would you react if I said that I was pregnant?"

Jack stopped walking, and looked at her curiously for a moment. His gaze dropped down to her stomach, and then back again to her face. His brow burrowed together. "Are you?" He asked suspiciously.

She laughed. "Jack...I've been in jail for three months, and you've been with me the entire time since except when you were at work today...and when I wasn't with you, I was shopping and cleaning. When would I have had time to conceive a baby?"

He shrugged. "Dunno."

She giggled again, and they turned the corner into their street. "Everything's coming back to babies at the moment." She thought aloud, remembering her and Jack talking about them in the cafe earlier, and then talking about them all last night with Jack when suggesting a toy room, and when talking about his job, and then that night they had been discussing things for the new baby as well with Charlie and Claire.

Jack nodded in agreement. "Maybe it's a sign."

"A sign for what?" She said, thinking that he sounded strangely like Locke.

"That you should start breeding." He did come out with the strangest phrases when he was drunk.

"Well, now that you mention it...I do have a list of potential donors that I drew up earlier..." She teased, and Jack's jaw dropped.

"Wait a minute!" Jack demanded, as they started up the driveway. "What about me?"

Kate choked on a breath for a moment. "What?" She asked, pretending she hadn't heard him right. Was he volunteering himself for her fake project?

"You can't make up a list of donors without me!" He said, clearly insulted that she'd done it without him, and drunk enough to think that she'd really done it. "I'm your right-hand-man. I need a say in these things. I can't just have you procreating with any Tom, Dick, or Sawyer."

"Sawyer?" She questioned, clearly noticing that there was a definite name change in there. Jack stopped at the front door and pointed at her.

"See. I need a word in this. Otherwise you'll go off making silly choices like him." He told her, like a father telling his daughter that she wasn't allowed to date until she was thirty.

Kate laughed as he struggled to open the door. "Don't worry, Jack. I'm not going to have Sawyer's baby." She firmly assured him. She wasn't planning on having anyone's baby at the moment. She had enough responsibilities what with being Claire's maid of honour and godmother to Aaron and the new baby. Jack was in the same predicament. Best man and godfather.

"Good. Because I can't have some miniature half-redneck half-southern half-Sawyer running around my house." He grumbled to himself, finally getting the key in the door whilst Kate laughed again. She must have heard him...hopefully she took his words to heart as well. "I'm serious!" He told her whilst she laughed. "I wouldn't know what to do with it. It would be half Sawyer, so I'd want to kick it, but half you, so I'd want to hug it...it would be too confusing..."

He trailed off when she laughed again they just went into the house. Jack laughed when Kate tripped over the doorstep because of her laughing, but he caught her in his arms, and letting her get her balance before helping her to straighten up.

Suddenly, they weren't sure whether they felt extremely sober, or whether the intoxication was really controlling their minds. They found themselves in a rather compromising position, one they had been in before. Kate with her hands on his chest, resting them on the muscles that she could feel through his black t-shirt, and Jack with his strong hands grasping her elbows, holding her steady.

Any other situation, this would have been a position they would have moved out of straight away, but with the alcohol running through their system and their faces less than an inch apart, moving was the last thing that either of them had planned. They remained that way, noses brushing against each other precariously as they breathed heavily. Both of them were waiting to see if the other person was going to make a move, and when it became clear that neither of them were, Kate leaned her head down so that it was resting on Jack's shoulder. He brought his arms around her completely, hugging her for a moment, and also breathing a sigh of relief.

Things had become very close to being awkward then.

---------

The next morning, Jack stood in the kitchen nursing the starts of a hangover. He hadn't drunk enough to be recovering from a stage two hangover. He had a slight headache, and although he didn't feel sick, something was definitely amiss. He might have looked no different from slightly tired when he glanced in the mirror in the bathroom that morning, but he currently had the attention span and mental capacity of an office stapler, which explained the three piles of unsuccessful burnt toast on a plate beside him. The coffee he was drinking in extreme amounts to try and stay focused was only spurring on his hunger, which, for some reason, was craving a full English breakfast of greasy fried food.

He was definitely glad that it was a Saturday morning, even though it was swiftly becoming Saturday afternoon. Time was flying as fast as the toast he was flinging into the garbage. Somehow, he realised that all he would be able to do that day is aimlessly wander the house for something easy that would occupy him for a long time.

Kate, however, was lying up in her bed, contemplating suicide. What had she done to deserve such a hangover, when she hadn't even drunk as much as Jack? She hoped to God that he felt a lot worse than she did, if that was possible. She had a second heartbeat in her head, either that or her brain was on the verge of exploding, but death seemed like a good option right now. She had tried to get up and look around the room, but her eyes were protesting about having to focus on something, so it had just kept everything spinning.

Her mouth felt dry, as if her body had lost the ability to generate saliva, and her tongue, which felt twice as big as she remembered it to be, was suffocating her. She would have been tempted to cry, but that would have used the last of the moisture left in her entire body. Talking wasn't an option. In fact, all she could manage to do was breathe...very gently...

The only problem was that she was thirsty, and knew eventually that she would have to get up and use the bathroom.

Jack was lying on the couch with a pillow underneath his head when Kate ventured downstairs. He had to admit, there was something about her that made him wonder whether he should dare to say hello to her, or whether he should hide behind some kind of barrier between them. On the other hand, she looked like she shouldn't even have gotten out of bed.

But she hadn't even drunk as much as him last night. She'd only had a few glasses of wine with Claire. How strong was that wine?

She shuffled into the kitchen, paying him no attention, and he heard the clinking of glasses in the cupboard, and then the tap running. The tap stopped, and then he heard a sneeze, followed immediately by a loud band, and a pathetic, high pitched "Oww..." that sounded a lot like someone who had hurt themselves, but didn't actually care to make a big fuss about it.

"Kate?" He questioned, sitting up a little too quickly, but going over to the kitchen anyway. She was leaning her head against the cupboard above the sink, the glass of water still untouched in her hand. "What was that bang?" He asked her.

"I sneezed," She explained briefly, her voice weak and scratchy. "And I hit my head at the same time." She straightened up and he saw her frowning. "It was ...confusing."

As well as seeing her frown, he also saw her pale cheeks and glassy eyes that were unfocused. She downed the water as quickly as she could, which left her feeling even worse afterwards, and then went towards Jack, intending on having a shower.

"Whoa, where are you going?" Jack asked, blocking her exit.

"Shower." She mumbled. "Wake me up a bit." She carried on walking forwards, ignoring him, and ended up walking right into his chest. She simply rested against him, curling against the comfort that was there.

"Shit, Kate!" He exclaimed.

He could feel her forehead burning up through his shirt.

He pulled her back slightly, and put his hand on her forehead, just to check, and found that she was burning up, badly.

"Bedtime now?" She asked in a small voice.

"Yeah, bedtime." He nodded, his voice sounding slightly worried now that he knew that this was more than just a hangover. He took her shoulders, and started to guide her up to her bed. When they reached the bottom stair, her head started to feel fuzzy. She carried on walking, sure that she would feel better when she had lay down. However, when her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she was vaguely aware of being caught, (well, she assumed she was, because she didn't hit the ground), she had a feeling that this might be the worst hangover from four glasses of wine that she'd ever had.


	7. In The Moment

Chapter 7:

_Enjoy the moment for what it is, not what it could be._

The next time Kate was actually aware of herself, she found herself basked in the comfort of her new bed, but still feeling like hell. She turned her face into the pillow, trying to rid herself of the feeling, but to no avail. She was feeling like shit on a summers day. She groaned at her aching head, and realised that there was a sudden freezing sensation on her forehead.

Trying to find out what it was that had been so cold yet not caused her to shiver, she blearily opened her eyes. Everything started spinning again, and she closed her eyes once more, willing her vision to still before she tried to move again. Now the ache in her head was resembling a heartbeat again, and the dull thudding matched her regular, but quick, breathing.

Opening her eyes again, she quickly got past the spinning, and found everything focusing on the thing before her.

"Hey." Jack whispered to her, replacing a damp cloth on her forehead now that she had stopped moving. Ah, she thought, so that's where the cold came from.

"Wha-" She said, stopping halfway through her scratchy word because of the sharp pain it sent down her throat.

"You passed out." He told her, looking down at her. No matter how disorientated she was, she couldn't miss the concern in his eyes. "How do you feel?"

"Shitty." She murmured, discovering that the quieter she made her voice, the less it hurt to speak.

Jack gave her a weak smile. "If it's any consolation, I don't think it's a hangover." He offered, and she groaned, resisting the temptation to bury her face in the pillow again because she knew it would only make her pillow wet if the cloth got pressed against it.

"So it's not going to disappear by lunchtime?" She assumed.

Jack glanced down at the watch he was wearing. "Kate, it's three in the afternoon." He told her.

"What?" She asked, sitting up in shock, but quickly collapsing back down with Jack's help when her head span uncontrollably.

"Hey, hey, just take it easy." He said softly, keeping his hand on her upper arm.

"I'm never drinking again." She whimpered quietly.

Jack gave her a gentle laugh, "I'll believe that when I see it." He teased, even though they both knew that this wasn't anything to do with alcohol.

They were silent for a while. Jack focused his attention on cooling her down, checking over everything he could think of, but the whole time, her eyes were trained on his face. He finally met her eyes, and gave her a reassuring smile, which she somewhat returned even though she felt like death.

"You should get some sleep." He told her, nodding.

She said nothing, just continued looking at him.

"Honestly, you'll feel better." He promised her, taking her silence as a plea not to remain in bed. "Just keep drinking water, and sleep it off."

"Sleep what off?" She asked finally.

"It looks like the flu." He confirmed, watching her groan at the thought. "Have you felt ill at all over the last few days?"

She shook her head, stopping when her whole skull seemed to rattle with the movement. "Not really."

"'not really'?" He questioned.

"I was sick about a week ago, but everyone was sick."

"Everyone?" He asked.

She nodded gently. "Couple of people were sick up on my wing." She confirmed. "A woman caught if off her son when he came to visit her."

Jack nodded, everything piecing together. "You must have caught the tail end of that then." He realised.

Kate groaned at the thought, and buried her face into the pillow on her side. Jack gave her a smile, and brushed her hair from her damp forehead.

"Don't worry." He assured her. "You'll be fine in a couple of days."

----------

Kate's weekend didn't get any better from there on. In fact, she was so determined to get better, than she ended up getting worse. By Saturday night, she forced herself out of bed and started on the stairs to join Jack in the living room to watch some television with him, but three stairs before the bottom, he came out of the kitchen and found himself face to face with her. Needless to say, a minute later, she was back in her bed.

Sunday morning, Jack brought her breakfast, which she managed to eat only half of before feeling sick. He helped her up and into the bathroom, and waited outside whilst she used the bathroom. However, when he heard the shower running, he had opened the door and escorted her back to bed before she'd even had a chance to undress for the shower. If she had done, he wasn't sure what he would have done.

Her next bid for freedom came around lunchtime. She got up to use the bathroom herself, when she had wondered how far she could get without Jack seeing her. Miraculously, she had been down on the couch for fifteen minutes and had even turned the television on before he had heard the television from the kitchen and had taken her back up to her bed.

Throughout the afternoon, she slept, unable to do anything else because she felt so drained from her small adventures. Every time Jack came upstairs, he checked in on her, bringing her another glass of water. It was all very well trying to flush her system out, but she was starting to need the bathroom every half an hour.

Jack checked in on her again to see if she wanted to try any dinner, but he found her fast asleep. About an hour later, he checked again, but found her bed empty. He wondered where she was this time, before spotting her silhouette behind the closed curtains at the window. He found himself smiling gently as he approached her, and pulled back the curtain a little.

"Hey." He said, when he saw her gazing out at the clear night.

She looked round at him lazily. "Hey." She whispered back.

Silently, he helped her to move forwards, and then he settled back on the window box behind her. She leaned back against his chest, and he brought his arms around her, holding them both onto the seat. He could see why she liked sitting here so much, as it really was a beautiful night.

"How are you feeling?" He asked her softly. There was no need to raise his voice, because with his face being so close to hers, there was only about an inch between his lips and her ear anyway.

"Terrible." She confessed. Her voice was even more hoarse now.

He gave her a sympathetic smile, which she couldn't see. This smile grew as, in her state of feeling like death frozen over, she turned slightly on her side in his arms and burrowed further against him. To give her the security she was looking for, he tightened his arms around her, and placed his lips to the top of her head to kiss the hair that he noticed smelt like the watermelon shampoo she had brought for herself. He liked it, it suited her. Content that she had found a comfortable position, she let out a sigh against him, closing her eyes.

"Jack?" She said softly, her scratchy voice reaching him and bringing him out of the daze he had thrown himself into with the new silence.

"Yeah?"

"When I was in prison, this is what kept me going." She revealed, not opening her eyes. "I kept reminding myself that I was definitely going to see you again one day, and it really helped me to know that."

He gave her another kiss on the top of the head. "There was no way I was letting you go for good."

"Jack?"

"Yeah?"

There was a small pause with another breathy sigh, and then she smiled, cuddling up to him again. "I like this." She declared. "It's so much better than…anything else I've ever had."

He took a moment to decide what she meant by 'this'. Did she mean the household environment of the two of them, living and co-operating together, or did she mean lying here in his arms whilst he was more than happy to hold her tightly underneath the starlight. They'd do this on the island. Whenever either of them would have a bad day, they would wander down the beach a little way, and spend the night underneath a clear sky, just being with each other.

Although, he had to admit, the feeling of her in his arms, and knowing that she liked it, made him shiver. It was so comfortable that it felt insane to him. He wondered whether he was simply feeling towards her. He hadn't felt anything else in a long time, but he was definitely crazy about her, no matter what it was he was feeling. Right now, she was sick, and he was there taking care of her, but it didn't change the fact that she was in his arms, and it was the best feeling in the world.

He brought her closer against him, hearing her make a soft moan as he did so. No wonder she thought this was comfortable, he thought, she had been lying in bed for so long. "I'm glad you're happy here, Kate." He told her honestly. He hated the thought of her being somewhere else and being unhappy.

"Course I'm happy." She told him tiredly with a yawn. "You're here."

He smiled, and squeezed her into a hug. They were silent from then, he staring out into the darkness of the night, and she relishing in the comfort that came from being pressed against Jack's chest whilst he held her contently. Neither of them moved until Jack felt Kate's breathing even up against his upper arms, her breath hitting his skin gently, and he realised that she had fallen asleep. Carefully, he lifted her into his arms, and lay her down in the bed.

"Goodnight, Kate." He whispered to her sleeping body as he pulled the blanket over her, kissing her cheek before he left the room.


	8. Misbehaving

Chapter 8:

_The best way to behave, is not to._

"Whoa, careful there."

"Sorry. Did I hurt you?"

"No, I'm fine. How are you feeling?"

"Glad to finally be doing this."

"You'd think it's been a long time since you last had one."

"Two days constitutes as a long time in this department."

Now, had the neighbours heard this conversation complete with all the bangs and crashes that came from the bathroom, they would probably have come to the same conclusion as any person would: that Jack and Kate were getting up to all sorts in the bathroom. However, they were doing no such thing.

Kate had felt slightly better when she had woken up on Monday morning, although she was wobbly on her legs and still a bit weak when she stood up. However, her head was no longer echoing her heartbeat, and her stomach wasn't constantly queasy anymore. With this new burst of health had come the need for a shower, something that she knew was going to be a problem with her shaky legs.

Needless to say, the question "Jack, can you help me have a shower?" had made the doctor almost choke on his coffee. For a moment, Kate wondered whether she was going to have to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation. Not that she'd have minded.

So now, he was walking into the bathroom with her, helping her towards the shower. This was probably going to be the most awkward time of their lives. More awkward than their first confrontation after kissing on the island. More awkward than Jack walking in on her having finished in the shower. More awkward, even, than the pair of them bumping into each other whilst skinny dipping.

Skinny dipping was a different matter to this though. It wasn't as embarrassing for either of them to have met in the ocean at the middle of the night, because everything was dark, and even if they'd wanted to, they wouldn't have been able to see the other person through the water.

This was completely different. He was going to be standing inside the shower with her, making sure that she didn't pass out or collapse. They had tried to come up with any other possible way for her to take a shower, but seeing as she still felt dizzy when she had stood up for a certain amount of time, it was impossible to consider her doing this on her own.

Jack had considered ringing Claire to come help, until he realised that he was an adult, and that he was more mature than that. He could have a shower with a woman and trust himself, couldn't he?

To cure the awkwardness, Kate had suggested that they shower in their bathing suits. Great idea, right? I mean, she was only going to be standing in front of him in a skimpy bikini, rather than completely naked. But still, he felt like his heart was beating ten to the dozen just at the thought of it. She had put her bikini on underneath her bath robe, and he was already wearing just his swimming shorts, which couldn't really be any different to any other pair of shorts he owned, these ones just had an ocean pattern on them.

Jack released her, letting her stand by herself as he leaned into the shower cubical and turned the water on. He tested the water with his hands, and it almost scalded him, so he turned the cold a little higher, continuously testing is so that it was okay for them to get in.

"Okay," He announced, still facing the running water. "Water's good."

When he turned back around to face her, the first thing he noticed was the absence of the white towelling robe that had covered her. In fact, all that covered her now was thin and sparse areas of material that covered her private areas. The bikini was emerald green, extremely accenting her eyes, giving them a beautiful shine, and it showed off her cleavage and her tone stomach and legs. And those hips? He didn't trust himself to think about them.

"This is weird." She laughed, clearly feeling as uncomfortable as he was. "We're all dressed up for swimming, and we're getting in the shower instead."

He laughed along, but it was blatantly a nervous laugh. He nodded, and held out his arm to the shower. "After you."

She gave him a smile, and walked past him to get into the shower cubical. As she did, Jack looked away out of politeness, but found himself staring at her reflection in the mirror instead. It wasn't just any part of her reflection either…it was her-

"Jack." She muttered simply, as he turned at her tiny voice and saw her steadying herself on the wall.

He got into the shower cubical beside her, and used his arms to steady her as she leant her weight against him. "You okay?" He asked her quietly, she could only just hear him over the rushing of the water.

She nodded. "I…I just felt a bit dizzy."

Jack frowned, as she placed her arms on his and steadied herself. "Kate, maybe this isn't such a good idea…"

She turned to him with a pleading look. "Jack, please. I need a shower." She said. "I feel like I'm lying in my own filth all the time." She explained.

The puppy-dog eyes that she subconsciously gave him won him over, and he nodded. "Okay." He agreed,

And so they went about their shower.

It was pretty hard, considering that as large as Jack's house was, the shower was very tiny for the two of them moving around in. They kept brushing up against each other in places where they probably shouldn't have done given the situation, especially as they were in a shower, and although both were effected by the accidental grazing of a hand against the others thigh, neither of them made any move to show it.

Amongst the brushing of hands, Jack had to keep on steadying Kate when she teetered, and stop her from falling against the wall, which she would have slipped right off because she was as wet as the wall itself. Eventually, she gave a frustrated sigh.

"This is so annoying!" She groaned through gritted teeth. "I can't even wash my own hair!"

Jack smiled at her, and braving himself, stepped closer, so that he was standing directly behind her. "Sit down." He instructed.

She looked at him strangely, unsure that she had heard him right. "What?"

"Sit down." He said, and sat down on the floor of the shower himself.

He steadied her as she stumbled on her way down, and after some moving around to get comfortable, she was eventually seated with her back pressed against his chest. The water above them hit her at just the right angle, and washed the shampoo from her hair without spraying in hers or Jack's face. Of course, to fit sitting down in the tiny shower, they both had to draw their knees up, and Kate kept her arms over Jack's legs so that she was staying in one position.

Jack's arms moved from where they had been steadying her shoulders, and instead started to kneed into her scalp, massaging the remains of shampoo from her hair. She instantly let out a sigh, when his expertly trained doctors hands moved over her scalp so firmly, but with a gentleness she had never experienced from anything else. There was something about being in the shower with Jack, whilst he washed her hair for her, that awakened a desire in her that she hadn't felt for a long time.

It was a dangerous desire, one that she knew that she couldn't act on. If her stubbornness wouldn't stop her from acting on it, her physical weakness from her illness definitely would. She had always seen Jack as an attractive man, there was no question about that, he was extraordinarily handsome. She had once been attracted to him in _that _way before on the island, but that was when she had gotten to thinking that there was a chance they could die the next day, back when Jack loved her.

Jack didn't love her anymore, and she had known it for sometime. She had known it from the moment that he had called her his best friend. She wasn't stupid, and knew that there were limits with friendship. Best friends could never fall in love with each other. Sometimes, especially times like this, Kate regretted telling him that she couldn't be with him in the way that a lover could, because she didn't want to hurt him, and because she couldn't stand the thought of losing him, but at the end of the day, she was losing him by telling him that.

But he had listened to her.

No, worse.

He had _agreed_ with her.

They both knew that it was risky, especially with the Others watching them like hawks, to have a weakness. It was different to having a weakness for ice cream, or chocolate, because they couldn't be lured into a trap with those. Jack had even told her that if he knew that the Others had the woman that he loved, he wouldn't think twice about going to any means necessary to save her. "I've already lost someone I've loved before, I won't lose another." That's what he had said.

For the next week, Kate had spent a lot of time wondering whether the woman that he loved referred to her specifically, or just a general reference. After all, they thought that they'd end up staying on the island for life, and it was hard to live without falling in love. He would have ended up with someone eventually.

A part of her just hoped that it would be her, although that part of her was long buried, no matter how much their compromising position tried to resurface it.

She felt Jack's hands release her hair, whilst he reached for the hair conditioner. She didn't move, and certainly didn't speak, in fear of making the moment awkward when the uncomfortable silence of it had already been lifted and forgotten. Now, she was more than content to let him do anything to her whilst she sat there.

It was only a matter of seconds before she felt his fingers weaving into her locks again, and she let out a sigh which she hoped wasn't audible over the sound of the shower. Only he did hear it, and he was trying very hard to distract himself from the fact that he had Kate making satisfied little noises in his lap. He didn't want to embarrass himself with her.

Eventually though, his body seemed to understand that nothing could happen, and concentrating on washing the conditioner from Kate's hair became more enjoyable for him. She knew that he was just doing it to be thorough, as he had no idea about washing hair as long as hers, but she also didn't think to tell him that the conditioner would have been completely gone at least five minutes ago.

His hands left her scalp, and rested on her shoulders again after some time. "I think you're good." He told her with a smile. He went to stand up, but she didn't move. "Kate, you feel okay?" He asked her, worried that she was feeling dizzy again.

She nodded. "Yeah, I'm just…comfortable." She told him, and he looked at her strangely, wondering how on Earth she could be comfortable crushed up in a shower with him. "I've been lying in one place for two days, Jack. This is comfortable."

He laughed a little, and gave up. It was early, and he still had plenty of time to get to work, and knew that a bit of relaxation before what was no doubt going to be a hectic day was good for him, so he shifted back into his position behind her. Instead of putting his arms on her shoulders, he wrapped them around her stomach, holding her against him. Instantly, he breathed in the aroma of the shampoo that he had just rubbed into her hair. It smelt like kiwi, and somehow, that suited her.

Kate leaned forward, so that the jet spray of water hit her face for a moment, and she wiped her hands over it, removing the excess water before placing her arms over Jack's holding his embrace steady, and placing her head on his shoulder.

"I hate being sick." She grumbled into the side of his neck, the vibrations of her breath against his skin sending shivers down his back, which he managed to take control off.

"I know you do." He whispered back to her, barely audible over the water, but she heard it just above her ear. "But you're getting better." He assured her.

"Tell that to me when I'm running around again." She moaned.

He laughed gently. "I could have told you that yesterday when you were making a break for it." He felt her breathing steady against his neck, and nudged her gently with his shoulder. "You still awake there?"

"Yeah." She said distractedly, and rolled her head so that he could see she was, in fact, awake.

"Good, cause you're making a habit of falling asleep in my arms," She blushed at his comment, remembering the previous night.

"You complaining?" She teased him weakly.

He shook his head. "Definitely not, but today I have work." He reminded her.

"Then don't go to work." She said simply. "Stay home, and I can go back to sleep."

He smiled at the idea of having her in his arms for a whole day, but he knew that he couldn't. He'd only end up ruining things between them by kissing her, like he had almost done the other night. He couldn't afford to ruin their friendship. They had boundaries, and he needed to stick to them.

"I can't." He told her reluctantly.

But still, she didn't move. "Please?" She asked him.

He almost gave in to her.

_Almost._

"I'll be home as soon as I can." He told her. "It's not that long."

"It's always a long time when you're not here." She mumbled tiredly. She never could lie or even bend the truth when she was tired, and he loved it. She always said the strangest things.

He smiled, and managed to stand up, helping her to her feet at the same time. He turned the water off, instantly missing the warm water running over him, and they got out of the shower. He reached for a towel, white and fluffy, warm from being over the radiator, and wrapped it around her tightly, bundling her up in it's softness. She smiled tiredly, and Jack wrapped his own towel around his waist.

She smiled at him as devilishly as she could muster. "You checking me out?" She tease him.

Jack laughed. "Trust me, If I was checking you out, you'd know it." He replied, exactly as he had done the first time she had asked him, over a year ago.

Turning around, she started towards the door of the bathroom. "I do know it. You're totally checking out my butt."

Jack raised his eyes from where she had caught him, hearing her laugh as he followed her out of the room.


	9. Certain Feeling

Chapter 9:

_When you can't stop a certain feeling from coming back, you have to stop and think that maybe it's real. Maybe it's supposed to be there. And maybe, you aren't supposed to keep denying it._

"You took a shower together!?"

Kate was starting to think that maybe telling Claire hadn't been the best of ideas. Still, when she had stumbled slightly when leaving the kitchen, her damp hair still hanging in wet tousles around her shoulders, Claire had questioned how Kate had managed to stay upright in the shower. So Kate had told her the truth, that Jack helped her.

She hadn't looked forward to the long eight hours while Jack was at work, so only minutes after Jack had closed the door, after helping her back down the stairs to sit on the couch, she had reached for the phone and called Claire. Claire had left Aaron with Lindsey, who was over the moon to finally have time with her grandson, and had headed over to Kate's for a relaxing girls day in.

Claire made an 'o' shape with her mouth, as the cogs started turning in her head. "Oh! So that's why you're so exhausted..."

Kate gave her an exasperated look over her mug of tea. She hadn't seen the point in coffee because that would only give her energy that she wouldn't be able to use. "Claire, we did _not_ sleep together."

"No, you chose the shower instead."

"Claire!"

Claire giggled. "I'm sorry, but you two...together...in the shower...heck, I'm only human."

Kate sighed. "Why does this _always_ happen?"

"What? Falling in love with handsome doctors in the shower. Jeez, talk about the heat of the moment."

Although the shower was in fact steamy, it wasn't for the reasons that Claire was suggesting. "No." Kate denied. "Everyone thinking that me and Jack are together."

"Well, you are together, just not in the way that everyone wants you to be." Claire pointed out.

Kate shook her head. "It's getting ridiculous now." She sighed. "I swear, people are planning our wedding."

Claire looked up at the ceiling, which didn't escape Kate's notice.

"Oh, god. Claire, _please_, tell me you're not."

Claire said nothing.

"Claire!" Kate scolded. "Shouldn't you be more worried about planning _yours_?"

Claire smiled at the mention of her wedding. She really did love Charlie, and her hand went to her stomach thinking about her new life. It wasn't that long ago she was planning on giving Aaron up to live her life as she wanted. Now, she was getting married with her second child on the way.

"Kate, don't you want this?" Claire asked her quietly. "The whole 'settling down' thing?"

Kate sighed. She really didn't know. Part of her wanted it more than anything. The idea of having more than freedom grounding her was the kind of thing she had dreamed of when she was on the run. She wanted a house that she wasn't hiding out in. She wanted children she wouldn't have to give up for adoption. She wanted a man who loved her that she didn't have to leave.

The other part of her was the part that usually won out, and it was the part of her that Wayne had rubbed off on. The back of her mind. The nagging voice that took the form of a slurring redneck who hit out at any threat. The voice that spoke told her that she wasn't good enough. She wouldn't fit in, in a nice house, with domestication. She wouldn't be a good mother, because she simply didn't know how to act around children. And no man, not a single one, could ever lover her.

She hated that part of her, because once she knew that Sam wasn't her real father, it had won completely. There was no more of the comforting reassurance that Wayne was simply a presence in her life, not the starting point of it. She was part of him, and that was never going to go away.

Kate, who was sitting sideways on the sofa, placed her arm over the top of cushions, supporting her head with her hand. She let out a sad laugh under her breath, with the shed of tears starting to form in her eyes, blurring her vision a bit, but she didn't even consider letting the tears escape.

"I wouldn't know what to do with it, Claire." She admitted. "I never really saw my Mom because she was always working. My dad was...the _worst _man in the world. My stepfather was just perfect." The tears were getting harder to hold in and Claire placed her hand on Kate's arm. "I don't know how to settle down."

"Kate, when the time's right to settle down, you'll know exactly what to do." Claire reassured her. "I didn't want to have Aaron at first, but all you need it time to adjust, and it comes naturally."

"Maybe I just shouldn't settle down." She mused.

"Oh, don't be silly!" Claire scolded, as if she was talking to Aaron instead of a fully grown woman. "You just need to find the right man, and you'll be all set to go."

"Hmm..." Kate nodded, not really agreeing with her.

"Then again, you might have already found that man."

Kate looked up at the blonde woman before her. "What?"

"Jack."

Jack...as in..._Jack_, Jack?

"Jack?" She questioned.

"Isn't it obvious?"

"Apparently not." Kate shrugged.

"Kate, he's totally in love with you!" She insisted.

Kate laughed, what a ridiculous idea. "Claire, Jack is _not_ in love with me." She explained.

"He is."

"Is not."

"Is too."

"_Is not_."

"_Is too_."

"Okay, we're sounding like kids." Kate said, halting the childish argument. "What makes you think he's so in love with me that I can't see?"

Claire didn't even need to think about it before reeling off a lot of memories.

"He let you _sew up his back_ with a sewing needle. When we first crashed you spent so much time together that everyone thought you were _married_. He never wanted you to do anything that would even _remotely_ hurt you. Whenever he did something wrong and you were mad at him he was miserable for days until you forgave him. He _never_, not for one second, cared about your past. He was jealous when you kissed Sawyer. He stayed an extra week with The Others just so that you could go free. He came back, and the only person he was looking for was _you_. He slow danced on the beach with you. He stayed by your side when you were sick that time. When you fell asleep on the beach, he carried you back to your tent. When we got rescued, he nearly _died_ because you were taken away from him. When we got back here, for those three months you were away, he was so _miserable_ I nearly shot him to put him out of his misery. He let you move in with him. He took A DAY OFF WORK FOR YOU. _A day off work_. Jack _never _takes a day off work. Do you have any idea how important that was? And last, but not least...you took a shower with him, and he respected you enough to not take you right there and then."

Kate stared at her blankly.

Claire let out a deep breath. "Right, I think I'm done." She said.

Kate still stared blankly. "Have you ever thought that he didn't take me in the shower because he's simply not attracted to me?" She considered.

Claire looked at her insanely. "Kate, he thinks your beautiful."

"Yeah, right." She said sarcastically.

"No, I'm serious." Claire said. "He was telling his Mom about you."

Kate shook herself. "I'm sorry. _What_?" She asked.

"When his Mom asked him what happened on the island, he told her about you. Nothing else. Just...you."

Kate frowned a little. A lot had happened on the island, so how could he have only mentioned her? "What did he say?" She asked hesitantly.

"He said that he'd never met anyone like you. That you walked into the clearing, looking so vulnerable and beautiful, and everything just _stopped,_ including his heart."

Kate shook her head with a gentle smile on her lips. Had he really said that about her? She could remember that day as if it were yesterday, and she remembered how shocked she had been to crash on a deserted island, and for the first person she saw to be a man, naked from the waist up, kneeling in the sand asking for her help. She was sure she read a romance novel like that once.

"He doesn't know I heard this, but he told her that he thought he was in love with you."

Kate looked up just staring at Claire. She tried to work out whether the younger woman was telling the truth, but there was no hint of a teasing smile on her lips, no mischevious glitter in her eye. She was deadly serious.

Kate looked away, down into the swirls of her tea. "That'd be nice if it were true." She mused.

"It _is _true, Kate." Claire nodded.

"Jack _can't _love me." She insisted.

"Why not?"

"We had an agreement, Claire. It's just be harder when one of us left." The tears were rising again.

"Kate, look around you." Claire said, motioning around the room. "You're both alive, you're living together, you're free from the law now. There's no people living in the jungle to hurt you. There's no fall off a cliff. Nothing. What could _possibly_ make one of you leave now?" Kate didn't answer, because she couldn't. She'd been wrestling with that question for days. "You should know that Jack would never leave you, not for the world, because you are his world."

Kate hid her face against her arm to hide the fact that tears were on her cheeks. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Jack couldn't love her, could he? He wouldn't go back on his word. He promised that he wouldn't fall in love with her. Claire let her have her moment, after all, it was a lot to take in that your best friend was in love with you.

Kate wasn't sure what to think. She had been a part of all of those times with him, but never once thought that he might have been in love with her. She knew that he cared about her, but this was different. This was love. Love was...love. It was stronger than anything, and she wasn't sure whether she could withstand that strength.

She eventually raised her head from her arm, and looked at Claire again. She opened her mouth to answer, but before she could do, the phone rang. She looked at it for a while, and then crossed the room to answer it.

"Hello?" She asked.

"_Kate, hey_."

Oh God...Jack had great timing. She quickly rubbed underneath her nose, and tried to sound a bit happier.

"Jack, hi." Claire's jaw dropped.

"_I just called to see how you were feeling_." He told her.

She nodded, even though Jack couldn't see it. "Yeah, I feel better." She assured him.

"_You sure?" _He asked her. "_You sound a bit...weird_."

She cursed silently, knowing that she probably sounded all choked up. "Claire's here." She explained. "We're watching a movie."

"_Ah_." Jack said. "_Is this one of those girly movies that don't make sense unless you cry at the ending?" _

"Yeah, one of those." Kate lied.

"_Well, I won't keep you from your movie, but I was wondering whether I should pick something up for dinner on the way home?_" He suggested. "_I checked the freezer before I left but there's nothing there because I forgot shopping this weekend. Fancy a take-out?_"

She nodded, composing herself successfully. "Yeah, take out sounds good. Just-"

"_No meat for you_." He finished for her, and she found herself laughing.

"Yeah, no meat for me." She repeated.

"_You go back to your movie, I'll see you when I get in_."

"Okay, bye, Jack."

"_Bye, don't overdo yourself_."

"I won't. Bye."

The replaced the handset, and then sighed heavily, turning back to Claire. "If Jack asks-"

"We watched a soppy movie." Claire nodded.

"No. I mean, if Jack asks, I don't love him."

Claire looked shocked at her. "Kate-"

"If he doesn't know, things will never change." She explained tearfully. "I've finally got a wonderful life, Claire, for the first time ever. I can't put the in jeopardy by falling in love...even if I've already fallen for him."

Claire nodded sadly. "Just answer me one thing."

"What?" Kate asked.

Claire fixed her with a stare that she couldn't have avoided if she wanted to. "_Do_ you love him?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do."


	10. Fate Exists

Chapter 10:

_Fate exists; but it can only take you so far. Once you're there, it's up to you to make it happen._

After Claire left at around three o'clock to collect Aaron, Kate had a long think about what she had learnt. They had agreed not to fall in love, but they both had anyway. Of course, knowing that Jack loved her made her feel kind of warm inside. At first, it had brought tears to her eyes, because she knew that nothing could ever be done about it, but now, it brought a gentle smile to her lips.

But she had made one big mistake.

She had admitted to Claire that she loved him.

Oh, God. Jack would probably know by the time he left work.

No, Claire gave her word, and she wouldn't go back on that.

She hoped.

So, with much deliberation, she came up with a foolproof plan to solve this. She was going to do absolutely nothing.

"I'm home!"

She was sitting in the living room watching the news when Jack came in through the door. She heard his voice, and then the slamming of the door behind him and turned her head to smile at him. Just seeing him made her heart rush at the thought that he loved her.

"Hey." She replied, turning back to the television.

He came into the room where she was, and the smell of pizza wafted towards her from the boxes in his hands. "How are you feeling?" He asked, placing his hand on her forehead whilst she rolled her eyes.

"Fine." She smiled. He gave her a look, and she nodded. "Really, I feel okay."

He nodded, satisfied that she at least had more colour back in her cheeks. "How was the movie?"

She almost asked 'what movie?', when she remembered what she had told him on the phone. She laughed at her almost mistake. "It was okay." She told him. "Not really my kind of film."

"You like the horror movies then?" He suggested.

She shook her head, her eyes wide. "Oh no, definitely not." She said determinedly. "I like my car chases and my explosions."

He laughed. It made sense that Kate was an action sort of girl. He still had a feeling that she was all for romance deep down. Wasn't every girl? "I got you a veggie pizza." He said, gesturing to the boxes.

She grinned. "Thanks. What did you get?"

"Unlike _you_ I like meat, so I got a meat feast." He told her, watching her grimace with clear amusement.

They went into the kitchen, and Jack was pleased that, unlike that morning, she could stand long enough to walk without feeling dizzy or stumbling. He was glad for that, but part of him had hoped she'd want another shower in the morning. She seemed to be okay for now, but he wasn't sure that this bug had completely packed its bags. She went to the cupboards and took out two plates whilst he placed the boxes on the table and poured them some drinks.

Kate hadn't had pizza in...however long. More than a year, which was a year too much when it came to pizza. She eagerly dug in, realising how little she had eaten over the weekend, and looked up at Jack. "How was work?" She asked him, realising how domestic it sounded for her to asking him about his day over dinner.

"It was all right." He told her. "Lots of kids came in with the flu bug. It must be going around."

"Nasty." She grimaced, still not feeling 100 percent herself.

"Sounds like you had a better day." Jack pointed out. "How long did Claire stay?"

"She left about three-ish to get Aaron from her mom's." She told him.

Jack nodded. "I spoke to the guy who handled our compensation case today." Kate wondered at first what he was talking about, but then remembered that this lovely big house had come from Jack's pocket thanks to the compensation from Oceanic airlines. "He kept your share aside, and he's mailing the check tomorrow."

Pleased at the thought of a lot of money coming her way, she grinned. "Lovely."

"Any idea what you're going to use it for?" He asked her.

Her smile faded, and she really thought about it. She'd always made her life around being tight for money, and suddenly she had a lot of it. She didn't need to buy a place to live, because she and Jack were perfectly happy living together. It wasn't like she needed to leave because he wanted the space, because he had been asking her ways to fill the extra rooms. She had no outstanding bills that needed paying for, no family to give the money to. She really did have nothing.

She had her friends, but they all had the compensation themselves. It was Christmas soon though, so she thought about getting them all a good Christmas present to make up for the fact that they had done so much for her - Jack especially.

"Hmm…" She said after a while. "I don't know." She shrugged. "What did everyone else spend their money on?"

Jack finished his mouthful of pizza. "Well, most people brought houses. I know Claire's put some aside for Aaron's college. I guess they're spending a lot on the wedding as well." Kate remembered her conversation with Claire about whether she'd want the domestication, and firmly told herself it was wrong to get married to someone just because she wanted to spend her compensation money. "Hurley bought his Mom and brother houses too. In fact, Hurley bought a lot of stuff because he already had nearly five million dollars. Sayid spent a lot of his money tracking down a friend of his. I know Sawyer gave some to his aunt. Rose and Bernard paid for some new cancer treatment that's not available much."

Kate suddenly flushed with concern. "Is she okay?"

Jack nodded. "The treatment's working, and she's going to be fine in a few months."

She sighed. "Thank god."

"Most of the money went on houses and family in the end." Jack concluded.

"Well, I already have a house, and I don't have any family." She said awkwardly. "Maybe I can pay towards the mortgage with my compensation…" She started, but Jack cut her off.

"No need." He assured her. "I paid the whole mortgage when I first moved in."

Kate looked shocked. "The whole mortgage for this place?" He nodded. "Jack, how much money did you all get?" She asked.

"Just over one million each."

Kate chocked on the mouthful of pizza, and banged her chest a few times under Jack's worried glance to make sure that the food went down properly. She coughed until she had drank some of the soda that had come with the pizza and then looked up at Jack, her eyes teary from the choking.

"One million?" She repeated.

"One million, three hundred and twenty three pounds, to be exact." He told her.

Jeez, no wonder no one could spend it all.

"What did you do with the rest of it?" She asked.

"Nothing." He shrugged. "I didn't even make half of it by the time I'd bought and furbished the house. I offered mom to get one out here, but she wanted to be back in LA. She didn't want to leave the house that her and Dad lived in for their whole marriage."

Kate nodded. "Yeah, I understand that." She didn't think she'd want to leave a house that she would have shared a lifetime of love in.

"I just put the rest of it into the bank, figured something would come along when I needed it." He laughed softly. "If not, Aaron's going to get a lot of inheritance from his uncle."

"Only Aaron?" She questioned.

Jack sipped some of the soda, before turning back to the pizza. "Kate, I'm thirty five." He explained. "I've already been married and divorced. The chances of me having any kids now is highly unlikely."

Kate watched him pick up his glass again over the rim of her own. She saw the disappointment in his eyes in admitting that last sentence. Working around children and having such a young nephew must have been hard for him, if he wanted a child so much. He would suit fatherhood so well, and she wanted it so much for him. Part of her, the side that had surfaced when she was with Claire earlier, wanted it with him.

"You never know." She told him lightly. "Some woman might just turn up on your doorstep and say 'I love you, I want to marry you and have your babies'." She said, trying to keep a straight face.

It wasn't long before both of them cracked up laughing.

"Kate, if a woman would turn up on my doorstep and throw herself at me, I'd be shocked, for sure." He laughed.

She looked at him frowning. "I never said she'd throw herself at you. She'd just tell you that."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "So, it's okay for her to marry me and have my babies, but not throw herself at me?" He tested.

"I didn't say that." She said stubbornly, surrendering to pizza.

Jack laughed. "Kate, are you jealous?"

"About as jealous as you were the other night when you told me that I couldn't make up a list of potential fathers of my baby without you there."

Jack, who seemed not to remember that very clearly, frowned, blushing at the thought. "I said that?"

Kate nodded. "You said that I wasn't allowed to pick 'any Tom, Dick or Sawyer'."

"Sawyer?"

"Yeah, you said that he was a definite no." She nodded again, laughing.

Jack laughed at himself, and picked up the last slice of pizza he had. "I was not jealous." He said firmly, a smug smile on his face.

"But you would be if I had Sawyer's baby." She finished for him.

He looked at her again. "I was not jealous." He repeated. He knew better though. He wouldn't just be jealous. His heart might break if she had Sawyer's baby, because that meant that she had slept with him, which meant that she felt something for him.

She nodded, and went back to her pizza. "Of course you weren't." She smiled sweetly. "Neither am I."

They ate in silence for a while, and Jack tried to figure out what she meant. If she said she wasn't jealous, and so did he, then did that mean she was jealous or not? She said it in a way that told him she knew he was lying. So…that meant that she was jealous, right?

------------

"No!"

"It's not that bad."

"Yes, it is."

"Is not."

"Is too!"

"Aw, come on…"

"Not if it was the only thing left to do in the entire world."

"You're stubborn."

"You have bad taste."

Once again, Jack had found his ego being wounded by a woman. However, this time, it wasn't in a shower. This time, they were sitting on his living room floor, going through his film collection. Half of them lay tossed in the pile that Kate had refused to watch. The other half were still on the shelf.

"Okay, just choose one." Jack decided. "Any of them. Your pick."

He went back and sat on the couch, sprawling over half of it feeling exhausted from his day at work. Meanwhile, Kate picked a movie, and started it playing whilst she went to make some popcorn. She came back a few moments later with the popcorn in hand, and settled cross-legged on the couch beside him.

Jack didn't even know what movie it was, but it wasn't that bad, and he could tell by ever so slightly glancing at Kate that she loved it. One thing he did notice was that she was gradually getting closer and closer to him, and that currently, she was sitting with no space between them.

But exhaustion crept over him, and all interest in the movie was lost…

_The door knocked, and he went over to answer it, sure to get there quickly. He didn't know why, but he felt the need to rush. Opening the door, the first thing he was aware of was that Kate was standing there. The rest didn't sink in unless she had given him a clue of it._

_It was raining. He knew that because her hair and clothes were damp, her dark curls plastered to her cheeks._

_It had been raining for some time, because there was traces of mud and grass on the bottom of her jeans, which had soaked up the rainwater almost up to her knees._

_It was winter. He had guessed that because her freckles were lighter, not as dominant as they had been in the summer sun on the island. _

_It was cold, as she was shivering slightly, and holding a jacket tightly around her, her arms were folded across her stomach._

_She was tired. He could see the dark circles underneath her eyes, and he could see that she was upset, because there was unshed tears in the green orbs._

_She was scared. He could see the ever so gentle frown that creased her skin with concern settled above her eyes._

_She opened her mouth, and spoke a single sentence. "Jack, I love you. I want to marry you and have your babies."_

Jack jerked awake again, startling himself with his subconscious thoughts. Had he really just dreamed about that? He looked across straight away, but Kate wasn't beside him anymore, and a shifting in his lap made him realise that she was resting against him now, fast asleep.

Slowly, his senses came back to him, as he realised that the Kate he was looking at now was nothing like the Kate in his dream. Her hair, dark and full of curls, was dry, hanging over her shoulders and lying against her back. She wasn't wearing jeans, but a pair of black combat trousers, which had no mud and grass on the hems. Her freckles had faded still, but they were sharper than they had been in the dream. She wasn't cold, because her bare arm showed no goose pimples, and she wasn't shivering against him. She was sleeping peacefully, no dark circles underneath her closed eyes, and her forehead was silky smooth with relaxation.

He looked at the television, realising that the credits were running through the film that they had never lasted through, and that it was rather late now.

Without thinking twice, he stood up, lifting Kate into his arms, and carried her towards her bed. All the way upstairs, he couldn't stop thinking about how easily she slipped into his embrace. She fit perfectly against him, pressing her cheek against his chest as he held her. Thank god she was asleep, or else she would have felt his heart racing.

He placed her down, and then put the blanket over her, tucking her in for the third night since she had arrived there. As had become a habit, he lowered his lips to hers, and placed them on her cheek.

He might have counted on pulling back to see the small smile on her lips as before.

He might even have counted on her sighing.

He certainly didn't count on Kate's lips darting to his cheek when he started to pull away, and her mumbling a faint "goodnight, Jack" before curling into the blankets…but that's what happened.

That night, he got into bed, suddenly terrified that he had kissed Kate…and she had caught him.


	11. Save Your Heart

Chapter 11:

_Give your smile to everyone, but save your heart for only one._

She'd never had mail like this before. She'd have bank statements, letters from friends, bills, deliveries from her mothers catalogue books that she need to sign for...but this was something else altogether. She traced her fingers over it, taking in all the numbers on it another time. Was it real? Was this someone having a joke? No, she told herself, all of the survivors had received this in the post. It was one hundred percent, absolutely, infinitely, genuine.

She came to realise that she had every right to be amazed by it. After all, she'd never held a cheque for one million, three hundred and twenty-three dollars before.

It was Friday morning, and Kate had been woken up only ten minutes ago by Jack. She had been quite content to have a lie-in that morning, but when the first thing Jack did was wave the envelope with her name on from Oceanic Airlines underneath her nose, she knew exactly what it was, and jumped out of bed immediately.

Her eyes had widened then, and were still like it. She'd always been brought up not to depend on money. The wage that her mother brought in from the diner was barely enough to cover the bills, and after her marriage to Kevin broke up, she had moved back in with her mother to help with the money. Wayne was no help, all he did was take whatever was left over and spend it on alcohol.

Presents had always been a creative task when it was someone's birthday, or when Christmas came around. As a child, Kate would spend a day sitting at the kitchen table, Christmas music in the background, whilst her mother was preparing the same Christmas cookies that she did every year. Whilst Diane cooked, Kate would be surrounded by pots of paint, glitter, card shapes and glue. She would make the Christmas cards that they sent out to their families, and as she started to get older, and the cards would get more sophisticated, no longer childlike snowmen with glittery hats, she found something else to create.

She would go to the farmhouse down the road, where she usually helped out with tending to the animals for the old farmer and his wife. Camille and Nathaniel's farm was where she spent most of her time. She would go there after school and muck out the horses, and in the summer, when it was still light outside when she was done, she would take one of them out for a ride around the fields.

Nathaniel would prepare blocks of wood for her, thin plywood that could be easily shaped by his skilled carpentry hands. He would sand the edges down for her, and drill tiny holes along the top edge. Camille would give her a box of ribbon, left over from her knitting and weaving that she did religiously. That's what Kate liked most about their house - everything was homemade by the pair of them, not stolen from what people had thrown out like Wayne's attempt at decorating.

With these blocks of wood, Kate would get finer paints, not the thick poster paints that she would paint the cards with, and a thinner paintbrush than the one that came free with one of her magazines. She took out a tiny book that she hid away from everyone else, not really a diary, just a collection of thoughts, and sayings. It was important to her, reading just one of the phrases every day in hope to bring some light to her life. With a steady hand, she would paint the sayings onto the blocks of wood, and then slid the scraps of ribbon through the holes, tying it to create a hanging device, and she would decorate the block where the writing hadn't covered it.

From the heart, and personal...the best kind of presents there are.

"You really don't know what to do with it, do you?" Jack said with a soft laugh over his coffee.

His comment shook her out of her memories, and she let out a heavy sigh. "I'm not used to having any money at all, let alone this much...the only thing I can think of is putting it in a bank." She shrugged.

Jack nodded. "Well, you never known when you might have to put a kid through college."

Kate laughed, sliding her coffee closer to her and lifting the warm mug into her hands. "I could put one hundred kids though college and still have change." She pointed out.

Jack laughed with her. "Well, maybe not if it was medical school...it took me ages to pay that off." He told her.

She suddenly realised that he had never mentioned his college life to her before, and was curious. She thought she had known more about him than anyone else, and she probably did. There was nothing else to do on a deserted island other than talk about things that had happened to them. "What college did you go to?" She asked him.

He finished sipping his coffee before answering her, as he placed his mug back on the table. "Columbia." He told her, then frowned. "Haven't I told you that before?"

She shook her head. "I know that you were a spinal surgeon based at St. Sebastian's, but not Columbia." She gave him a smile. "Tell me about it."

"Not much to say really." He shrugged. "I graduated med school a year faster than anyone else."

She looked intrigued. "Whoa, pretty impressive." She grinned.

"Yeah, well, Dad was a surgeon too, so I guess I inherited my doctors hands from him."

She smiled slyly at him. "You mean there's someone else with amazing doctors hands like yours?" She teased.

She could have sworn she saw a blush creeping up his cheeks.

"They're not that amazing." He told her quietly, turning back to his coffee.

She raised an eyebrow, enjoying teasing him for a moment. "I don't know, Jack." She shrugged innocently. "The other morning in the shower begs to differ."

Any mention of that morning brought an instant blush to his cheeks, crimson spreading over his face.

"Relax," She told him with a laugh. "I'm just kidding...you're terrible with your hands."

He looked up at her, shocked. "I am not!" He protested.

"Well...I can't really argue, because I don't exactly have experience with your hands." She told him.

He was about to give her a comment back, wanting to try and turn the blush back on her before he gave away that he wanted her to have experience with his hands, when he caught sight of the clock out of the corner of his eyes.

"Damnit!" He swore. "I've gotta go." He told her. "I'm going to be late again."

------------------

When Jack arrived back from work that evening, he found the living room empty. Usually when he got in, Kate was sitting on the couch watching television, or reading a book. Instead, the couch was empty, untouched from what he could see. The television was off, but there was sound coming from somewhere, and it sounded like...Wham?

He pushed open the kitchen door to hear the sound of Kate's voice accompanying the sound of George Michael singing in the kitchen. Over the sound of the music, she hadn't heard him enter, so she was still singing her head out whilst she was bent over something before her. He stood in the open doorway, admiring her with her smile on her lips, paint and glitter on her cheeks.

_Last Christmas, I gave you my heart_

_But the very next day, you gave it away_

_This year, to save me from tears, _

_I'll give it to someone special._

The kitchen table was littered with traces of ribbons, blocks of plywood and little pots of decorative paints. Not to mention the various paintbrushes, probably to blame to the strokes of paint on her cheeks. There were glitter tubes, pots of glue, scraps of card...everything you'd expect to find in an art room. She looked very content there to be so creative.

_Once bitten and twice shy_

_I keep my distance, but you still catch my eye_

_Tell me baby, do you recognise me?_

_It's been a year, it doesn't surprise me._

Smirking, he spoke up. "So, who's your heart going to this Christmas?" He asked her.

"Jack!" She stopped singing, not realising that he was watching her until she had looked up to get a new glass of water. Already, the water her paintbrushes were in was stained a greenish-grey colour from the mix of paints. "How long have you been there?"

_I wrapped it up and sent it _

_With a note saying "I Love You" I meant it _

_Now I know what a fool I've been _

_But if you kissed me now I know you'd fool me again_

"Just long enough to wonder how long you've been a fan of George Michael." He told her, putting his papers down on the worktop, safely away from Kate's havoc of creativity. "I see you're having fun."

She smiled contently, filling up the glass before returning to her chair. "Yeah. Yeah I am."

He had to give her a soft laugh. "One million dollars, and the first thing you bought was glitter and paint?" He observed.

_A crowded room, friends with tired eyes _

_I'm hiding from you and your soul of ice _

_My God I thought you were someone to rely on _

_Me? I guess I was a shoulder to cry on _

_A face on a lover with a fire in his heart _

_A man undercover but you tore me apart _

_Oooh Oooh _

_Now I've found a real love you'll never fool me again _

"And wood." She said. "And ribbon."

"So...uh...what are you doing?" He asked, still not seeing what the point of all of this was.

"Tradition." She explained. "When I was a kid, I'd go to this farm, and the farmer would give me loads of plywood blocks, like this, and his wife would give me her spare scraps of ribbon to pick from, and I'd make plaques to give to people at Christmas."

He nodded. "Good idea." He agreed.

_A face on a lover with a fire in his heart _

_(Gave you my heart) _

_A man undercover but you tore me apart _

_Next year _

_I'll give it to someone, I'll give it to someone special _

_special _

_someone _

_someone _

_I'll give it to someone, I'll give it to someone special _

_who'll give me something in return _

_I'll give it to someone _

_hold my heart and watch it burn _

"We never had much money, but it was nice, because me and my Mom would spent the whole day in the kitchen." Jack sat down in the other chair beside her, watching her far off face turn into a smile as she remembered her past. "She'd be baking the cookies, and I'd make these, and we'd have the Christmas music playing...it was fantastic."

Jack nodded, getting an idea, and starting to root through the cupboards.

"Jack, what are you doing?" She asked.

He found what he was looking for and held up the bag of flour. "Tradition, right?"

She smiled. "We're gonna make cookies?"

"No, I'm gonna make cookies." He told her "I'll cook, you can do the plaques...and we'll have the Christmas music playing...and it'll be fantastic."

_I'll give it to someone, I'll give it to someone special _

_I've got you here to stay _

_I can love you for a day _

_I thought you were someone special _

_gave you my heart _

_I'll give it to someone, I'll give it to someone _

_last Christmas I gave you my heart _

_you gave it away _

_I'll give it to someone, I'll give it to someone _


	12. Maybe Just Forever

**_This is just a short chapter, but you're all going to just fall in love with Jack (if you already haven't!) in the next chapter. This chapter gives a clue why..._**

Chapter 12:

_A girl and a boy can be just friends, but at one point, they will fall for each other. Maybe just temporarily, maybe at the wrong time. Or maybe, just forever._

"Thanks for a great day, Jack." Kate smiled as they walked through the city centre.

It was late now, almost midnight, but they had decided on going out for dinner before they caught a later showing of the movie. It was nice now to walk through the centre of the city, passing all the shop windows that were displaying their Christmas decorations, bright lights shining on their faces and warming their chilled skin. It didn't matter how warm it was during the day, midnight was a cold time to be outside.

Kate pulled her coat closer around her, zipping it up a little more before settling her arm back through the loop that Jack created with his.

"You're welcome." He said. "I had fun too." He added with a smile.

People that passed them on the street must have thought they were a couple, walking along arm in arm, slow steps to make the night last, and smiling at whatever the other person said. They did make a good couple, Jack thought, as he caught a sight of them in a shop window, the reflection making them seem a perfect fit. Her head was just the same height to casually lean on his shoulder as they walked, their arms linked together with so little effort to keep them entwined, yet still, they were stuck together. They looked like they were meant for each other.

It just made him love her even more than he already did.

He didn't doubt that anymore, though. He no longer denied it to himself that she had captured his heart and never let go. Sawyer had urged him to go on dates when they had first returned to Sydney, but he couldn't even think about doing it. The truth of it was, he gave his heart away to Kate a long time ago, and he had never gotten it back from her. Now, he wanted her to keep it forever.

As much as he embraced the feeling of being in love, however, he didn't want to tell her that he loved her. He couldn't. They had the agreement that they weren't supposed to fall in love. It was too much of a risk to lose her, and he never wanted to leave her side again. He loved her, and he wanted to be with her more than anything, to be the first thing she saw when she woke up, and to hold her in his arms all night long, but he couldn't bear the thought of seeing that look in her eyes. The same look that he had given him after that first day they kissed, back on the island, as she backed away from him. He didn't think he'd be able to live if she gave him that look again.

"Oh." Kate piped up suddenly, releasing his arm and running over to the shop window three shops ahead of them. "Jack, this is it! This is it!" She called back to him.

He caught up with her, stopping in front of the window that she had already pressed her palm against. "What are we looking at?" He asked her. "Your Christmas list?" He smirked.

It was a jewellery shop, one that Claire had told Kate about on the phone the previous day. "Those ones." Kate said, pointing towards the back of the display to a set of matching golden rings.

"Wedding rings?" Jack questioned, raising an eyebrow at her. "You want wedding rings for Christmas?"

She nudged his arm with her shoulder. "No, silly. They're the rings that Charlie and Claire have picked out for their wedding." She told him, then turning back to the window. "Aren't they lovely?"

Jack nodded, the matching rings did have a certain appeal about them, simple gold bands, the slender one, designed for the woman, with diamond shaped 'X's along the top, with the engraving of 'i love you, always' on the underside of the ring. "Sure are." He smiled. "Never thought you were a jewellery person, Kate." He mused aloud.

She laughed slightly, the window steaming up a little from her breath. "Not usually, but occassionally there's something that catches my...eye!" She gasped on the last word, as her eyes widened.

"What?" Jack asked, following her gaze to the top corner of the display.

Her stare had been attracted to one particular jewellery set. A crystal necklace, patterned in the style of decorative leaves, with matching earrings and a bracelet. She didn't think she'd ever seen something so beautiful. "It's so..." She tried to find the right world for it.

"...sparkly." Jack suggested, and she nodded.

"Yeah, sparkly."

He could see her longing when she looked at it, and smiled. "You should buy it for yourself." He told her.

She looked at him, shocked at the suggestion. "I couldn't." She said, shaking her head. "It's five hundred dollars."

"That's not a lot considering you've got your compensation now." He pointed out.

She looked back at the necklace set again. She really wanted it. After all, she had a wedding to attend soon, and she was sure that she could get herself a nice dress to wear with it. But five hundred dollars on herself? She'd never spent so much money on a single thing for anyone, let alone for herself.

"No, I couldn't." She denied again, but her eyes not moving from the sparkling genuine crystal before her. It really was beautiful...

"Kate, when was the last time you did something for yourself?" He asked her softly, and she looked at him, biting her lip between her teeth. Jack put his arm around her shoulders, looking at the necklace with her. "For once, just...treat yourself." He told her.

She gave a little laugh and nodded. "I haven't done something like that for a long time." She mused.

Jack's face lit up with an idea, and he led her away from the window. "Right, tomorrow we've got Charlie and Claire's engagement party." he decided, as they continued to walk with his arm around her shoulders, her arm coming around and resting on his hip, "We're going to go shopping for something to wear, and then you're going to come down here, and buy all that jewellery. All five hundred dollars worth." She looked like she was about to argue, but he over spoke her. "Then, you're going to have a pampering afternoon, and you can do all that girly stuff in the bathroom, and blare music out of the speakers until we go deaf, and do whatever you need to do to treat yourself." He told her.

--------------

At eleven thirty the next morning, they were back outside the jewellery shop, with a disappointed Kate standing pressed against the glass again. This time, she wasn't quite so entranced. The necklace, earrings and bracelet set was gone. Someone had brought it that morning, and it was an exclusive, so they only carried one set. Kate tried not to let her disappointment show, but Jack could see in her crestfallen eyes how sad she was that she couldn't have the necklace.

If only she knew that he had picked it up for her that morning.

He didn't like to see the disappointment on her face, but when they had parted ways to get something to wear that evening, he had gone into the jewellery store and brought the necklace set for her Christmas present. Of course, it was an early Christmas present, because he knew that he was going to give it to her tonight.

She hadn't let him see what she was going to wear that night, but he had let her sneak into his bags and see the black shirt and new denim jeans he was going to wear. He hoped that whatever she was wearing wasn't too beautiful, however, because he knew that Sawyer was going to be at this party, and he didn't want him to stare at her like she was an object.

He wasn't entirely sure what was happening in the bathroom that afternoon, but she disappeared in there with a plastic bag filled with things from the drug store, probably girly pampery things at his guess, and didn't resurface for hours. He had nothing else to do, so had dug out some of the pots of paint left over from decorating the other rooms, and had started to paint the remaining two spare rooms, one in sky blue, and one in pale yellow. He had listened to music whilst painting the other rooms, but didn't need to, because he could easily hear Patsy Cline drifting from the bathroom with Kate's singing accompanying alongside it.

_You made me love you  
I didn't want to do it  
I didn't want to do it  
You made me want you  
And all the time you knew it  
I guess you always knew it _

You made me happy sometimes  
Sometimes you made me glad  
But there were times, dear  
You made me feel so bad

_You made me sigh for  
I didn't wanna tell you  
I didn't want to tell you  
I want some lovin', that's true  
Yes I do, indeed I do, you know I do _

Give me, give me, give me what I cry for  
You know ya got the brand o' kisses that I'd die for  
You know you made me love you

You made me sigh for  
I didn't want to tell you  
I didn't wanna tell you  
I want some lovin', that's true  
Yes I do, indeed I do, you know I do

Give me, give me, give me what I cry for  
You know ya got the brand o' kisses that I'd die for  
You know you made me love you

God, how he wished that she was singing about him.


	13. You're Beautiful

**_Are you ready to fall in love with Jack ladies?_**

Chapter 13: You're Beautiful

_You don't love a woman because she is beautiful; she is beautiful because you love her_

Jack came out of his bedroom just before they left, still rubbing his face dry with the bathroom towel, and checked in the hall mirror to make sure that he had definitely got rid of all paint traces that were on his skin. Once Kate had vacated the bathroom, he had opted for a shower, and found himself still listening to the Patsy Cline tape that she was playing. He now had 'Walking After Midnight' stuck in his head.

When he left, Kate was still in her room getting ready. He wasn't surprised to see that she was really enjoying giving herself a pampering, but he never pegged her as the girl who took hours to get ready. He placed the used towel in the washing basket underneath the towel rack, and then went back into his bedroom. Going over to the new pile of clothes he had purchased that morning, he put on his new back shirt, making sure that he left the top two buttons open. Not that it made any difference to him, but he remembered on a particularly warm day on the island that Kate had become very flustered on the day that he had undone that extra button.

Now that he was ready to go, he quickly got the boxes containing Kate's jewellery, and took them downstairs, where he was going to wait for her. They still had ten minutes before they needed to leave to make it into town on time, but Kate was pushing her time a bit.

"Kate, are you ready?" He called up the stairs to her.

"Almost!" She shouted back down to him through the now open bedroom door. "Just give me a second."

He didn't shout back up, and just waited patiently, leaning against the back of the couch. Moments later, he heard her footsteps, and cast his glance towards the staircase.

"Whoa."

She was wearing a dress. Kate. A dress. It didn't seem right. But it was beautiful all the same. She was beautiful. The dress was green, the same colour as her eyes, and whilst it was tight around the bodice, showing a slight cleavage, it was choppy and flowing from the waist down until it skimmed to a layered hem around her knees. She had matching shoes, the same green colour, with a diamante pattern to them, strangely matching the diamante crystal that was elegantly dotted in tiny shimmers on the bodice. She had pulled the top half of her hair into a bun, with a few loose tendrils hanging down from it, and had kept the bottom down, and with its length, hung to at least halfway down her back, shielding the lack of dress that was there to hide the skin.

"Are you sure this looks okay?" She asked anxiously, biting her lip as she stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked in the mirror, fingering her hair and adjusting her dress. "I suppose I could just put some jeans on, I mean, is it a bit too much for an engagement party? I could wear that new blue halter that Claire showed me, and put all my hair up, I-"

"Kate, you're rambling." He laughed, as he came behind her and placed his hands on her bare shoulders. It sent shivers down her spine, but she didn't let him know that. "You look fine. More than fine. You look...beautiful." He admitted, watching the blush creep up to her cheeks.

"I guess its okay." She agreed in a mumble, smiling against her will at his compliment.

"Good," He grinned, "because we haven't got enough time for you to go and get changed."

"We could go for fashionably late." She suggested playfully.

He eyed her strangely. "Kate, you know exactly what they're going to think we're doing if we're more than thirty seconds late." He pointed out.

She nodded, and giggled. "I suppose so." She reached for her jacket, which was hanging on the edge of the banister. "Let's go then, shall we?"

"Wait." He said, reaching for her arm, and bringing her back to stand before the mirror. He noticed how perfectly their reflections seemed to match beside one another. "I've got a surprise for you. Close your eyes."

She frowned at his reflection. "What?"

"Close your eyes." He repeated with a smile. "Don't worry, I'm not going to ruin your make up." He teased, as he crossed the room. "Now, stay there, and close your eyes."

She did, and Jack came back to her, waving a hand before her face before confirming that she couldn't see a thing. Then, he reached up to her ears, and removed the delicately hanging earrings she had.

"Jack?" She questioned.

"Shh...don't move." He instructed, and placed the earrings down on the small shelf under the mirror, beside his car keys. He then did the same for her necklace, and her bracelet. Then, he placed the jewellery set he had brought on her, and when he had done the clasp on the necklace, he smiled. The set really did suit her.

"Okay, you can open your eyes." He told her.

She did so, and when faced with her reflection, she gasped. She hadn't spent long pining at the necklace set in the window, but she didn't think that Jack was doing this for a second. "Jack!" She cried in disbelief, fingering the jewellery that was exactly what she was going to buy. "I thought they they'd sold this!"

"They did." He confirmed. "To me."

She realised that he must have been to buy it whilst they were shopping separately, and smiled with a choked laugh. Turning, she flung her arms around his neck. "You are so wonderful." She told him as she tightly hugged him. "I owe you five hundred dollars."

He shook his head as she released him. "No, you don't." He told her.

"Jack, you can't just buy me a five hundred dollar jewellery set and expect me to-" She started, but he cut her off, smiling all the while.

"Consider it an early Christmas present." He told her, and she fell quiet. "Really, Kate. I don't want you to pay me back a single cent for this. I wanted to buy it for you."

"Why?" She asked him, wondering why on Earth he would spend so much on her.

He simply smiled, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Because you're so important to me, and I wanted to show you that." He admitted. "Now, come on, we're going to be late."

-----------------------------------

The party was brilliant. Jack and Kate arrived on time, much to the disappointment of Claire, who had thought that maybe they might have been otherwise engaged. Sure, she wanted her brother and unknown-but-future-sister-in-law at her engagement party, but she wouldn't have minded if it meant that the two of them finally came to terms with the fact that they were madly in love with each other. Especially when Kate was looking so drop-dead-gorgeous in that dress. Any sane man would have jumped her in a second...then again, they say that love is akin to insanity.

"I'm so glad you're here!" Claire squealed as she hugged Kate. "You look amazing, honey!"

"Thanks, and look at you!" Kate said, indicating to where Claire's figure-hugging dress not only showed off her curves, but also the slight baby bump that was starting to make itself known.

"I know." She grinned, putting her hand on her stomach. "I guess Baby wanted to come to the party."

Kate smiled. "Nobody puts Baby in the corner."

Both her and Claire burst out laughing, something that was lost on Jack. He knew that the line was from Dirty Dancing, but Claire and Kate had watched it earlier that week after they had the important love talk.

Jack simply smiled, and put his hand on her lower back and leaned in to speak close to her ear. "I'm going to get us some drinks." He told her. Kate smiled, and he left the two women alone.

Claire gave Kate a suspicious look. Kate instantly stamped on any thoughts running through the young woman's head. "I'm not sleeping with him." She said straight out.

Claire raised an eyebrow. "Sure you're not." She said sarcastically, and then she caught the light shining off of Kate's many crystals. "Oh...my...God...is that what I think it is?"

"That depends what you think it is." Kate said, grinning like a fool and glancing over in Jack's direction. He smiled back at her, watching with mild pride as Claire observed the jewellery with awe.

"I think it's that set from the jewellers in town that costs five hundred bucks." She murmured, mesmerised by the crystal.

"Then you would be correct." Kate told her, and Claire's eyes widened.

"Kate, you'd never spend this much money on yourself."

"I didn't." She said simply.

Claire watched as her eyes flickered in Jack's direction, and she looked over her own shoulder to see that Jack had, in fact, been looking at Kate, and then 'innocently' turned back to where he picked up two glasses of wine. She turned back to Kate. "Jack brought this, didn't he?" Kate simply nodded. "Kate! He spent five hundred dollars on you?" Again, Kate nodded. "He is totally in love with you."

"He is not."

"Is too."

"Claire, we agreed we weren't having this discussion anymore." Kate hissed under her breath as Jack started to approach them.

"No, we agreed we weren't having this discussion in public." Claire compromised.

"And we are in public so...thanks, Jack." Kate cut off, accepting the glass of wine that Jack passed to her.

"Right, well, I better go make sure that Charlie hasn't sold Aaron to someone." Claire said, excusing herself. "Not that he ever would, but, you know..." She didn't even think of another excuse, and made herself scarce.

Jack raised an eyebrow at Kate, and they spoke in unison.

"Do I even want to know?"

Kate spoke over the top of him. "You don't want to know."

The only problem was, she knew that he would want to know.


	14. Get Up And Dance

**_Kate's always had a choice between Sawyer and Jack...I think it's about time that she made her choice, even if it is over dancing._**

Chapter 14: Get Up and Dance

_Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance._

Kate had strayed away from the main crowd of people over to the buffet table. She was glad to see everyone again, and she did have a while of catching up to do, but for now, she was starving. Due to her pampering session that afternoon, which had left her feeling extremely relaxed, and she was glad that Jack had talked her into it, she had not eaten, and was glad for the large buffet choices before her.

"Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in."

She turned sharply at the voice, accompanied by a hand slyly sliding onto her waist. Although it made her jump at first, it didn't take her long to recognise the familiar Southern twang to the voice.

"Sawyer!" She exclaimed.

He grinned at her, his dimples etched like small ridges on his cheeks. "Nice to see you too, Freckles." He declared.

"You scared me," She told him, putting a hand on her chest before lowering it again. She pulled him into a short, friendly hug. "How are you?" She asked him.

"All the better for seeing your face." He told her, trying to pick up that old charm, but she didn't rise to it. "Didn't know you were out of the brig, Thelma." He told her.

She nodded, grinning genuinely at her freedom. "Yeah, just over two weeks now." She told him.

Sawyer raised his eyebrow. "You don't say?" He said, soon adding: "Where you stayin' at?"

"I'm with Jack." She said, gesturing in his direction to where he was talking to Charlie, Aaron settled on his hip. Sawyer looked back at her, his eyebrows travelling even higher, and she realised what she had just said. "I mean...I'm not, _with him_, with him." She explained. "But I'm living with him."

Sawyer let his eyebrows fall back into place, and nodded. "One of those 'friends only' arrangements, right?"

"Yeah." She told him, trying to regain her cool after sounding like a rambling idiot.

"Whatever you say, Freckles." He said, not believing her for a second that there was nothing going on between her and the doctor. "So long as you're happy."

Her smile covered her whole face again, and he watched as her eyes drifted over to Jack again. "Yeah, I am." She nodded, looking back to Sawyer again. "Things are great at Jack's."

Sawyer nodded. "I hear you're gonna be a Godmother soon enough, too." He said, nodding over at Claire's baby bump. Kate grinned at her future Godchild. "Didn't even know Missy Claire wanted another sprog so soon when she was about to give Baby Huey up to strangers."

Kate's face was masked with seriousness as she looked back at him. "She had her reasons, Sawyer, and she's over them now."

"All I'm sayin' is, she's what, four years younger than you?"

"Seven years." Kate corrected, frowning as she tried to figure out what Sawyer was getting at.

He frowned. "Seven years?" He asked her.

"I'm twenty eight. She's twenty one." She confirmed.

Sawyer suddenly felt disgusted for any lustful thoughts that had ever run through his mind considering Claire. He was fifteen years older than her! Considering when he first joined the race, he was old enough to be her father.

"Well," He said, getting back to his original point. "She's seven years younger than you, and she's already got her second sprout on the way." Kate threw him a warning look as she realised his idea. "You not thinkin' of poppin' one out soon?"

"How about I pop my foot up your ass instead?" She suggested.

"Alrighty, that's a no then."

She sighed. "I'm not even sleeping with anyone, so yes, that's a no." It was something that she didn't want to tell Sawyer, but she needed to tell him incase, somewhere in his depraved mind, he thought she was sleeping with Jack. Truth be told, she hadn't slept with anyone since around three months before the plane crash.

"You wanna be sleeping with someone?" He asked her casually.

She looked at him, disgust written all over her face. "That had better not be an invitation." She warned him.

He held up his hands in surrender. "I'm just sayin', Sweetcheeks. I got friends."

"I'm happy how I am, Sawyer." She insisted.

"For now maybe."

-------------------------------

Jack watched Sawyer and Kate from across the room, making sure that he didn't make eye contact with either of them when they cast looks in his direction. He was feeling the same jealously now as he did when Kate first asked about Sawyer when she spent her first weekend with him. Jealousy...he was actually admitting to being jealous of Sawyer.

"You okay, man?" Charlie asked him, when he realised that Jack wasn't entirely focused on the conversation, and rather, was giving Sawyer murderous stares.

"What?" Jack asked, snapping his head back round to face Charlie.

"You look like you want to rip Sawyer's head off." Charlie said, following his gaze to Sawyer, who was currently leaning over the buffet table to get a shrimp.

"He's looking at Kate." Jack said, a determined discomfort in his voice, and to Charlie, it sounded like Jack was being protective of her. To Charlie, it sounded like he was protecting the woman he loved.

Charlie didn't see what Jack meant. "Well, usually, when you talk to someone, it's polite to have eye contact..." He explained.

"That wouldn't be a problem if it were her eyes he was having contact with." Jack complained, and Charlie swiftly realised that Sawyer was blatently staring at Kate's breasts, however, she was too busy deciding what to eat to notice.

Charlie grimaced. "He's treading dangerous territory." He mumbled under his breath.

"I should have known he'd-"

"Just leave him to it, Jack." Charlie told him.

Jack looked at him like he was nuts. "Leave him to it? Are you insane?"

Charlie put his hand on Jack's arm, which swiftly reminded Jack that he was holding Aaron, and couldn't go to hurt Sawyer whilst he had a baby in his arms. "He'll only cause a fight." Charlie pointed out. "I don't want my best man and one of my ushers fighting at my engagement party." He gave Jack a small smile. "Besides, Kate's not stupid. She knows what he's like."

Charlie finished up his drink, and went in search of another, whilst Jack remained looking at Sawyer. "That's what I'm worried about."

Kate had fallen victim to Sawyer's charms before, and he wasn't ready to lose her to them again.

----------------------

"Come on, Freckles."

Kate gave him an awkward look as he followed her around. "Sawyer, I don't really..."

"It's just a dance, pumpkin." He told her.

She shrugged. "I'm not really that good at dancing." She said, before continuing to walk back to the buffet table.

"You're just shy." Sawyer teased.

"I am not!" She said stubbornly, and Sawyer grinned, knowing that she was rising to the challenge.

He held out his hand to her. "Then prove it. Dance with me." He told her.

He watched as her hand flickered to his, and then to the the ceiling, before she answered. "Sawyer, just drop it, okay?" She said, before talking off once more. This time, he didn't follow her.

-------------------------

She picked up a single party-sized sausage roll, and made her way over to the edge of the dance floor, where Jack, leaning against a stable, stood watching them. She noticed that he no longer had his nephew on his hip, and as she approached, she saw Hurley lifting him high in his arms on the dance floor, making the young boy squeal with delight.

Jack, she noticed, was watching Charlie and Claire dancing, not that far away from their son. They definately suited each other, and when the three of them were together, Kate always thought they looked like a family of dolls, with their blonde hair and blue eyes.

"They really are happy together." She commented, as she came to stand by his side. He didn't turn to adknowledge her.

"Yeah." He said simply.

She nudged his shoulder with her own bare one, her skin brushing up against his smart black shirt, surprising her with how tightly it snugged around his muscular bicep. "Don't worry, Jack." She said optimistically. "You'll be happy like that one day as well."

"Who says I'm not already?" He smirked, turning towards her as they both let out a light laugh. "How's Sawyer?" He asked her afterwards.

"Ugh." She complained, before quickly eating her sausage roll. "The usual. Flirty and annoying." She said, trying not to spray him with pastry.

"What's he doing this time?" Jack asked through a laugh, but she could tell he was asking her sincerly.

She swallowed the ramains of her snack. "He keeps asking me to dance with him." She said, rolling her eyes as if the mere notion was absurd.

Jack frowned at her. "You don't want to?" She shook her head firmly. "You told me once that you loved dancing."

"I do." She confirmed. "I just don't want to dance with him."

She noticed the satisfied grin that crossed his features. "I see." He said simply.

"The reason I didn't want to dance with him, is beacuse I already owe someone else a dance." She revealed.

Jack raised an eyebrow at her. "You lose a bet?"

She shook her head, and took his hands in her own, pulling him onto the dancefloor with a crafty grin on her face. "Come on, Dr Shephard." She teased him. "You never have twirled me around a real dancefloor before."

He grinned, not fighting her tug. "Well, in that case..." He told her, and he smiled to himself, knowing that she had chosen his company over Sawyer's, and that he was the one who caused her to giggle with delight, much like his nephew was doing, when he spun her around the dancefloor, watching her twirl like she was an angel.


	15. For The Moment

**_This chapter skips ahead to the end of December (we all know what day) , and for the next few chapters, we're going to stay on this day, as a lot gets done on this day. Yes, look forward to wedding talk (but who's wedding?), spa treatment, and a mistletoe encounter (but is it a kiss, and who is it for?)_**

Chapter 15: For The Moment

_Live for the memories you can't put into words_

Kate hadn't been able to sleep for hours now. She had nodded off around one o'clock in the morning after saying up until midnight with Jack playing poker. She had won this time. It turned out that he couldn't read her as well as he could read Sawyer and Hurley. He had known this was obvious though, there were times when he could read her like a book, but when she really tried, he never could read her at all. They hadn't played for stakes though, just with the set of poker chips that Jack had brought out of storage from his teenage years.

She rolled over to face the alarm clock. The red glowing lights showed that it was 6.12 in the morning. Finally, she agreed that this was a more reasonable time than the last time she had checked (at 3.14), and sat up in bed. Retrieving a sweater from the top of her chest of drawers, an old navy one of Jack's that he had leant her on her first night at his house, and she had never given back to him out of habit, she slipped it on over the top of her pyjama top, and padded quietly over to the other side of the room.

There was a small dressing table there now, one that she had brought with her compensation from Oceanic. Gradually, she was finding more and more things she could buy, even if she had hardly put a dent in the large sum. She leaned over the stool, not bothering to sit down, and in the gentle early morning light, where the sun was still of the horizon, she checked her hair, finger combing it to try and lay it flat, but it still sprung up in her natural curls.

Grinning, she creaked open her bedroom door, sliding it ever so gently so that it didn't make a noise. She knew that opening it quickly would probably ensure the silence better, but sneaking quietly and slowly was part of the fun of this routine she had planned.

As quietly as she could, her bare feet soundless padding against the carpet, and any sound that did come from them was muffled by the gentle and almost inaudible sound of the bottom of her pyjama pants scraping against the carpet. She crossed the hall, and reached out for the handle to Jack's bedroom door.

Taking it in her hand, she turned it quietly, listening for the click that echoed a little in the early morning silence. When she heard it, she pushed the door open, just as slowly, if not, slower, as she had done her own. This time, however, she didn't close the door behind her, and she snuck into his bedroom.

She noticed straight away that he was still asleep, lying on his back and facing the ceiling with closed eyelids. As she got closer, she could hear the sounds he made in his sleep, too loud to be breathing, but too quiet to be snores, and the sound made her smile. Getting closer still, she noticed that he had kicked the covers off himself in sleep, so that they were covering just his waist downwards, revealing a bare, and very inviting, chest.

As much as she would have loved to stand and stare at his chest like a lusty teenager, she had bigger plans for the moment, and edged right to the side of his bed, where there was only inches of air between her and the sleeping man.

Just about to jump on him, she took a breath, but was surprised when Jack's body lept into a sitting position and threw her down onto the mattress beside him.

"Jack!" She squealed as he began to tickle her wherever he could reach; her sides, her underarms, beneath her knees, her feet. He knew that she was ticklish, especially when she was caught off guard like this.

"Jack, stop!" She pleaded with him, but through her laughter, he paid no attention to her.

Eventually, she managed to get herself back up from where she was at his mercy on her back, and she grabbed a pillow, hitting the back of his head with it. The pillow fight lasted a long time, filled with loud laughter and muffled, playful screams that were toned down by the blocking of the pillows.

It wasn't long before the energy they had was exhausted, and they lay side by side, facing the ceiling, on the bed together. Both of them were breathing hard, catching their breath from what some people would consider a fairly good workout.

Only minutes after laying down, with half-meant laughs to pass the silence between them, Kate regained the same burst of energy that she had wrestled with all night, and she rolled over quickly, hitting Jack gently on the chest before rolling back the other way and clambering off the bed. Once on her feet, she checked to see if Jack was following her example and getting out of bed, but he wasn't.

Picking up a pillow that lay near her feet, she threw it at him, and it landed on his face. "Come on! Get up!" She insisted, and took off down the hall as she called back to him. "It's Christmas!"

--------------

She got to the top of the stairs before going back for him yet again, but found he was waiting to tickle her senseless again. However, she was not about to let this happen another time, and ran down the stairs faster than he could catch up with her.

When they eventually got into the living room, Kate ran straight towards the Christmas tree, going over to the windowsill behind it and opening the last door on her chocolate advent calender. She giggled when the chocolate touched her tongue, and heard Jack laughing behind her. However, his laughter stopped when she made a dive for the Christmas tree, and he caught her around the waist to stop her.

"Hey, let me go!" She protested, squirming against him.

"Oh no, you don't." Jack told her, turning her in his arms so that he could keep a better hold of her. "We're waiting for the others, remember?" Kate pouted at him. "Don't look at me like that, we agreed this last night."

"I was excited, I wasn't concentrating." She pointed out to him. In fact, Christmas Eve had brought about a side to Kate that Jack imagined she had all the time when she was five years old. She had spent the entire evening running around the house, bouncing up and down because she didn't know what to do with herself. He loved seeing her so happy.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "You were concentrating when I asked you if you wanted any ice cream." He reminded her.

Kate sighed, caught out on her previous excuse. "Okay, fair call." She admitted. "But ice cream doesn't need thinking about, it's a necessity."

Jack simply laughed at her. So she tried another approach.

"Did I mention you were looking very handsome this morning?" She asked him seductively.

He shook his head, smiling down at her. "No, you didn't."

She put her hand on his cheek, her smooth skin brushing against his stubble. "You do, you know." She said. "First thing in the morning is always when a man looks his best...rugged, natural...manly..."

Jack smiled, fighing back a laugh, and brough her in closer to him so that he could speak very closely to her ear. "Flattery will get you nowhere, Kate." He told her. "We're waiting for the others to get here."

She pouted again, hoping that he would fall for it the second time. "But they won't be here for hours!" She protested.

Jack stepped back from her. "Then we'd better have some breakfast." He told her, going towards the kitchen.

Sighing, she started to follow him into the kitchen, but doubled back at the last minute, making another break for the Christmas tree and everything beneath it. However, just when she was close enough to touch it, a hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. Not tight enough to hurt, but enough for her to know that she'd been caught red handed.

"I was just going to hold them." She said quickly, trying her best to sound innocent.

"Hey, we agreed that shaking presents is wrong." He reminded her, remembering the story she told him about shaking a present with her brother and it turning out to be a set of china ornaments.

"No, it's not." She said with a sweet smile to try and win him over.

"They might be breakable." He pointed out.

She thought about this for a moment, biting her lip in the child-like way in which she knew that she was wrong, and was desperately looking for a way to compromise this. "...its not wrong." She muttered helplessly.

Jack laughed again, and swiftly lifted her, throwing her over his shoulder.

"Jack? Jack, what are you doing? Jack! Put me down!"

Her protests were accompanied by the flailing of her arms and legs, but her tiny frame stood no chance against his firm but gentle grip and she slumped against him, surrendering by default as she huffed. "Did you have ANY friends growing up?" She asked him irritantly.

He simply grinned as he carried her into the kitchen. He sat her down in the chair, after kicking the kitchen door shut behind him, and he went over to the kitchen worktop, watching as the restless, energetic Kate slumped her upper body in a sprawl over the table.

"Jaaaaaack, it's Christmas!" She complained. "We've gotta open presents."

"We're gonna open them soon." He assured her.

"But we've gotta do it now!" She insisted.

Jack had a feeling that this is what Claire would experience in a few years time on Christmas morning with Aaron, only she would have another child as well. In fact, Jack imagined that Christmas with Kate was going to be like having a child in itself, not only was it a gift, but she was also as excited as all the children they had seen queuing up to see Santa in town last weekend. At one point, he wondered whether he was going to have to take Kate in to see Santa too.

"Kate, the sun isn't even up yet." He told her, indicating to the kitchen window where the sky outside was still grey. He went over to the CD player, putting in the same Christmas disc that Kate always did. "Now, let's make the messiest, best breakfast we've ever had." He told her.

She lifted her head from the table and grinned at him. "Now, you're talking."


	16. Perfection

**_God I love Jate bickering with serious moments afterwards...you know, I don't think there's any real angst in this story...just one hell of a load of denial..._**

Chapter 16: Perfection

_A real girl isn't perfect, and a perfect girl isn't real._

Christmas breakfast proved to be a messy, and fun filled, affair for Jack and Kate. Twenty minutes later, they had managed to prepare the pancake batter, and were just getting ready to cook it. Of course, the reason it had taken twenty minutes was because Jack was still trying to keep Kate from the presents.

But at the moment, there was one more pressing matter taking over her mind.

"Seriously, we are not putting chocolate chips in the pancakes." Jack said, through a laugh at Kate's suggestion.

"I got news for you, mister, we seriously are." She decided, and went ahead dumping the chocolate chips into the prepared mix before Jack could get another word in edgeways.

"That's 'doctor' to you." He corrected her.

She raised her head, and put her hands on her hips, looking at him with all the daring that a woman could muster. "Are you at work?"

He looked around him. No, he was very much in his kitchen. "No."

"Then you're not a doctor today."

She went back to stirring the pancake mix, now complete with chocolate chips, and Jack nudged shoulders with her. "Cheap shot." He grumbled, though he was still smiling.

"I'm right though." She grinned.

"Not all the time." He scoffed.

"I totally am." She said, like a teenage girl.

"Are not." He argued.

"Wanna bet?" She challenged him.

He nodded. "Definately."

She grinned. "Well, how about you wait and see what quotes I put on the plaques, and then tell me that I'm wrong?" She suggested.

"Fair enough." He said, taking the rise. "Did you make me one?"

"Of course I did." Kate told him, as if she were insulted that he would suggest otherwise.

"What does it say?" He asked.

"You'll find out when you let us open presents."

Ah, he realised, so that was her game. He gave her his dreamiest smile, and poured the pancake mix into the saucepan. "Nice try, but not gonna work." He told her.

---------------------------------

After she had gone through breakfast without trying to escape to the presents, Jack allowed her the time alone in the kitchen whilst he went upstairs to take the first shower. He was only gone about ten minutes, and when he came back downstairs, he half expected to find the living room coated with wrapping paper.

She was curious, because he had brought her the necklace set that had cost so much money, yet there were still presents underneath the tree with her name on them. She wasn't used to that. It gave her a warm feeling inside, and she liked it.

When Jack entered the living room, she was standing behind the sofa, her hip resting against it as she carefully fingered a cushion edge with her fingers. About six feet ahead of her was the Christmas tree, and beneath that, the presents. She could easily see the ones she had wrapped for Jack, and the ones to one side that had been put aside for Charlie, Claire and the others. Most were the same size and shape.

Jack watched her, where she couldn't see him, and saw the curiosity in her eyes. When he'd been married to Sarah, he'd imagined coming downstairs on Christmas morning, and seeing his children gazing at the tree with such wonder in their eyes, but seeing that look in Kate's green eyes was so much more beautiful to him. He watched her, leaning against the wall as she stayed motionless.

He could see that she was itching to move, even in the slightest, where she was toying with the rope tassles on the corners of the cushions. But she didn't move. She just stared at the tree. She wasn't smiling, but her lips were parted ever so slightly in a cute way that, had she been several feet shorter, could have her mistaken for a five year old.

"I can't do it." She spoke out to him, clearly showing that she knew he was there. After all, he wasn't exactly hiding, she just hadn't been looking at him. "I know I want to open them, but I couldn't."

"Why not?" He asked, not moving from his space.

She turned her head towards him. "Because you weren't here." She said sincerely.

All of the excitment in her eyes, and the laughter that had been in her voice all morning disapepared from her, and Jack realised that here was the Kate who took Christmas seriously.

He stepped closer to her, as she continued talking. He knew her well enough to know that there was still something else she wanted to say, and if he waited, just a little while, she would allow herself to say it.

"If there's no one here with me, then I don't know that it's real." She admitted, looking back at the tree, before focusing her gaze to the pillow tassle she was torturing with her fingers. "It doesn't feel real when you're on your own."

Jack stood beside her, and put his arm around her waist. Immediately, her head fell against his shoulder, and he placed a kiss upon her tousled brown curls. "You're not on your own now." He told her, almost challenging her to see if she would move for the presents, but his tone was soft.

"I'm still not opening them." She said, shaking her head against his shoulder. "This is going to be my first family Christmas that actually feels like its with my family." She told him. "You guys are my family now, so when we have dinner, I can look around the table and see you all, and know that this is where I belong."

Hearing her say that this was where she belonged caused his heart to swell within his chest. He'd wanted so badly for her to feel like she belonged with him, and it had never been said. All it had taken was for him to give her Christmas.

"Does that mean you're going to be here next Christmas?" He asked her with a smile.

She raised her head, and looked at him. "Just try and stop me." She grinned.

He smiled at her. "Come here, you." He told her with a soft laugh, bringing her properly into his arms. They crushed each other into a hug, and when they parted, he kissed her on her forehead. "This is definately where you belong." He assured her.

"With everyone?" She smirked, knowing what his answer would be.

"With me."

They smiled, and hugged again, but this time, the presence of butterflies invaded thier stomachs.


	17. Problem Solving

**_Ladies and Gentleman...it's about time we saw Mommy Shep, don't you think?_**

Chapter 17: Problem Solving

_We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.  
Albert Einstein._

Christmas morning had not always enjoyable for Jack. For him, Christmas had always been a family occassion, even when his family wasn't quite...there. Most years, Christian had been at the hospital, and hadn't come home late on Christmas Eve to help Jack put his stocking up, or even be there first thing in the morning, when a young Jack would creep into his parents room, jumping on the bed to get them to wake up, because Santa had been.

It reminded him a lot of how Kate had crept into his room that morning, with bright, shining eyes, full of excitement of a real Christmas for once. She'd had the same creeping footsteps, that he had heard when she shuffled along the carpet, and pushed his door open just enough for her to slide through the gap. They'd both been happy, both full of anticipation of a real family Christmas with everyone for once, and whilst neither of them would admit it, they were both thrilled at the idea of spending such a special day with the one that they'd loved. When it came down to holidays, Jack would rather celebrate Christmas with the woman he loved than Valentine's Day.

Somehow, Kate had managed to contain herself for a few more hours, and still hadn't attacked the presents, even though she had been caught gazing longinly at them.

"They're not going to disappear if you stop looking at them, you know." Jack had told her, as she lost yet another car race on the games console because she had looked over at the presents and crashed into a wall.

"I know." She told him, gearing up to race again, even though she would no doubt look over and crash yet again. "I just...I just can't believe that I've got presents this year." She told him in a tiny voice, hopeful that he didn't hear her, but the nudge in her shoulder she got told him that he did hear her.

"Living in this house includes a holiday package as well." He told her, teasingly.

She nudged his shoulder back, smirking to herself as she successfully made him crash into the side of the course. "So, does that mean I'm getting chocolate Easter eggs and a Valentine's present?" She asked him.

"That depends." He told her.

"On what?"

"On how well I do with Christmas presents."

She laughed, not taking her eyes off the screen as she overtoook his car for the second time in the race. "I think it's safe to say that you'll do okay." She pointed out. "I mean, my early Christmas present was a very sparkly set of jewellery that cost you about a million bucks." She remembered.

"Five hundred bucks." He corrected her. "And I'll just have to remember that you like sparkly things." He looked up from the game as Kate cheered as she crossed the finish line before him. "I think you should wear it today." He told her thoughtfully.

"To prove to your mother that you're a gentleman?" She teased.

"No, she knows that." He laughed. "I just know that you like wearing it."

"Oh yeah?"

"Well, when I come home to see you wearing it with jeans and a sweater while you're hoovering, I think it kinda gives it away." He said, proud of his gift.

She laughed, remembering how he had stared blankly at her. "Well, I'm sure it'll go great with what I'm wearing today." She told him.

"What are you wearing today?"

"Claire made me buy something new the other day." Kate grimaced, remembering her horrific Christmas shopping trip a few days before, in which she simply vowed 'never again'.

"Ah." Jack said, remembering how Kate had chanted 'never again' for about half an hour after returning from said shopping trip. "Well...is it nice?" He asked casually.

"No." She said, sarcastically. "I found the raggiest, most awful thing on a coathanger I could and thought 'yes, thats perfect for meeting Jack's mother in'." She said, before bursting out laughing. "Yes, it's nice."

Jack laughed as well. "Please don't tell me you made a big fuss over impressing my mother with clothes?" He asked her.

"Of course not." She told him, no sarcasm present this time. "Claire did." She added.

Of course, Claire would have. Claire saw this meeting as the classical 'meeting the parents' routine that most couples went through. However, Jack and Kate weren't a couple. Jack and Kate were friends. Jack and Kate were a concept, a team, housemates, everything but lovers.

"Trust her." Jack sighed under his breath. "Let me guess, _poor_ _Kate_ had to spend ages in changing rooms to find the perfect outfit?"

"_Poor Kate_ won't be going shopping with Claire again." Kate corrected.

"Aren't you two hitting the after Christmas sales together?" Jack remembered, and Kate glared at him. "...Or will you be suffering from spontaneous flu?" He added, seeing the desperation to get out of shopping with Claire yet again.

"I'd be willing to settle for being on my deathbed." She shrugged. "But then again, this is meant to be shopping for the baby, not for me and her."

Every time Kate went shopping, she ended up buying something for Charlie and Claire's expected baby. Now that Bump was getting closer and closer to being more than a bump, Kate was taking her role of Godmother very seriously, and apparently, being Godmother entailed buying a lot of presents.

"I think you should spoil yourself." Jack told her. "Buy something impulsive with all that money you just keep leaving aside."

"Well, I was going to do that." She reminded him. "But the someone who encouraged me to do it turned around and bought it for me instead." She told him, giving him a playful jab in the ribs and reminding him of the jewellery set.

"What? I can't buy you a present here and there?" He asked innocently.

"Jack, most _boyfriends _don't even buy their girlfriends the 'occasional present' when it costs five hundred bucks." She pointed out. "I'm not your girlfriend, and you're randomly spending five hundred bucks on me. _This_ is why I can't believe you're single."

"Well, _technically_ you are my girlfriend." He told her, screwing up his eyes a little as he thought it over.

"Technically?" She questioned.

"Well, you're my friend, and you're a girl..." He reasoned with her. "So, besides the kissing, the sharing a bed, the romance, and, of course, the sex," she laughed at this, "you _are_ my girlfriend."

When she had finished laughing, she kissed him on the cheek. "Well, that's one part down."

Jack feigned disappoinment. "I meant tongue."

She gave him a warning look, which, as she didn't mean it, came across as her just being highly amused. "Don't push your luck, Shep." She warned him.

Jack glanced up at the clock. "Mom will be here soon." He announced.

Kate looked at him, slightly panicked. "How soon is 'soon'?"

"Like, ten minutes."

Suddenly, the cool and collected demenour she'd always had about meeting Jack's mother disappeared. She stared at the clock, showing that it was ten minutes to eleven o'clock. Claire and the others wouldn't even get there until half past eleven. Half an hour with just Jack and his mother.

She was doomed.

"Oh." She said, trying to appear calm, but Jack could see her eyes still widened at the fact. "That's nice."

Jack laughed despite himself. "Worried about meeting the parents, Kate?" He teased her.

She went to tell him 'of course not', but those weren't the words that escaped her lips. "Yes." She said simply.

Jack got to his feet, moving the console contollers back to where they were kept, and then went and pulled Kate to her feet, standing before her with his hands on her shoulders. "Kate, it'll be fine."

"No, it won't."

"She'll love you."

"She'll hate me."

"No, she won't."

"I'm sure she's seen the news, Jack. I was a criminal. A few months ago, I was in jail. I had a trial for murder. Mother's don't usually like that sort of thing." She pointed out.

Jack gave her a reassuring smile. "Yes, she's seen the news." He told her. "She knows about the trial, and that you were a criminal, but she doesn't care."

Kate looked at him, struggling to understand. "She doesn't?"

He shook his head. "When she saw how beat up I was about it, she said that you must be worth all the worry that everyone had for you."

"Really?"

"Well, technically, I think it had more to do with the fact of how Claire explained it to her." Jack realised.

Kate's eyes went wide. "You let _Claire _explain it to her?!" She asked, her voice slightly higher than usual. "Jack, she's going to think that we love each other."

"Yeah, that's about right." He told her, seeing Kate about to erupt, he continued. "But I set her right on it, don't worry." He assured her.

"How? Did you tell her Claire was on drugs?"

"No." He told her, laughing at the look on his mother's face if he had told her that his baby sister and technical single mother was taking drugs. "I just told her that I wasn't in love with you."

"Did she believe you?"

Jack bit his lip. "I'm not sure."

"What? What do you mean you're not sure?"

"I don't know. She just went _'hmm'_ and then stopped talking about it. If I'd carried on it'd look like I was denying something." He told her.

"Jack, when women go _'hmm'_ it means they flat out, one hundred percent, _don't _believe you." Kate explained, as if she were talking to a five year old.

"Well, excuse me for not being a woman." He said, holding up his hands in response.

At that moment, the doorbell rang, and Kate jumped at the sound. Jack went over to answer the door, and Kate followed, standing to one side slightly as Jack let Margo into the house.

"Jack, honey! Happy Christmas, sweetheart. How are you?"

"I'm fine, Mom. Merry Christmas." He told her as he hugged her.

Margo then turned and saw Kate, playing with her fingers out of nervousness. However, Margo smiled and walked over with open arms, embracing a shocked Kate, who met Jack's eyes over Margo's shoulder, giving her an 'I told you so' grin.

"And you must be Kate. Oh, it's so good to see you in the flesh at last!" Margo said, before pulling away and holding Kate at arms lengths to look at her. "So...you're the one who's stolen my son's heart."

As Margo hugged Kate again, Kate glared at Jack over her shoulder. Jack just gave her his best apologetic shrug. Clearly, Margo had chosen to believe Claire.


	18. Eye To Eye

**I'M SO SORRY!**

**I thought I'd get that out with capital letters in bold text. Seriously, I know I haven't updated this fic in forever, and you guys have been so patient and lovely. Thankfully, the start of season four seems to have kicked me into shape again, and I've got my Jate Mojo back! So, even though this was meant to be up Xmas 2006, it's coming up in Feb 2008 (god, I am so sorry!) My updating will be more regular now, I swear, and if I go back on that I want you all to constantly bug me until I update again and I know you're capable of it so stop looking innocent!**

**Chapter Eighteen: Eye To Eye**

_Stand eye to eye at the sunrise and you'll never see anything more beautiful_

Christmas Day that year would always be remembered by Jack and Kate as the day that the mindset of the island finally became that of civilisation. This was mainly because Claire had finally latched on to Jack's mother long enough to convince her that planning her son's wedding to Kate really was the best Christmas present she could ever give him. Thankfully, this didn't include a ready-made planning album, but it did mean his mother was bringing up wedding details over dinner - even though Charlie and Claire were the ones walking down the aisle in two months time. After Margo and Lindsey went home, it seemed to stop, but only because Jack and Kate had warned Charlie and Claire that if they continued the wedding talk they would find themselves sleeping at home tonight.

Tonight was the first time that the guest rooms were getting used. Charlie and Claire were sleeping in the spare double room, and Aaron was getting to use the great new spare room that was completely kitted out for him. He wasn't aware that this was specifically his room, a Christmas present from Uncle Jack, he was just aware that there were toys in this room, and he intended to play with them and try his best to draw on every uncovered surface. As he became sleepier and sleepier downstairs, Claire and Kate took him upstairs for some 'girl talk' while they put him down to sleep, leaving Charlie and Jack to do the washing up.

Jack warmed his hands in the soapy water, occassionally passing a cleaned kitchen utensil to Charlie for him to dry. On the fridge, propped up with every available fridge magnet, was the decorative phrase plaque that Kate had given him for Christmas. As promised, he'd had to admit to her that she knew him more than he knew himself, just for the words that she'd inscribed in beautiful lettering upon the wood. _Stand eye to eye at the sunrise and you'll never see anything more beautiful_. It brought back memories of the island, of the days when they'd stand and sink to get away from the suffering and bad times, just for a while.

They talked about Christmas memories for a while, and then fell into silence. Charlie took this silence as an opportunity to bring up the conversation that he and Claire had prepared for their seasonal visit. "So...how's it going?" he asked, as innocently as possible.

"How's what going?" Jack asked, not raising his eyes from the bubbles before him.

"Kate," he said simply.

Jack looked up, passing Charlie a plate with a confused expression. "Is this going to be one of _those _conversations again?" he asked.

"I'm just asking if she's settling in okay," Charlie covered up.

He nodded. "Yeah, she's just fine."

"Still sleeping in the guest room?"

Jack rolled his eyes. "It's not a guest room, it's her room," he corrected him.

"Right," Charlie nodded.

There was another silence...an uncomfortable silence...and then, the Brit just couldn't hold it in anymore, and flailed the kitchen cloth around him.

"How have you not slept together yet?" he burst out loudly.

"What?" Jack asked, completely caught off guard at the sudden abruptness.

"I'm sorry, I know that you're doing this 'just friends' thing, Jack, but it's crazy!" Charlie continued to cry. "People that haven't even met you think you're married! Everyone on the island thinks that you should be married. Bloody hell, it's like you're already married but you just haven't got the rings and you're not having sex!"

To his surprise, Jack laughed. "Charlie, that's ridiculous. We don't act like we're married."

"yes, and I'm a polar bear," he said sarcastically.

"Seriously, we don't,"

"You seriously do."

"Charlie-"

"You've got some real issues with denial, you know that?" he pointed out. Jack went to answer, and he cut him off. "Look...you have breakfast together, you share housework, you argue over TV and movies, she's there cooking dinner when you get in from work and your mother thinks you're in love with her."

"That's Claire's fault," he pointed out in regards to Charlie's last point.

"No, it's your fault for moping too much when Kate was in prison."

"I missed her," he shrugged.

"You love her."

"Charlie." His tone was simple, but its meaning was clear. Charlie knew that he had his chance to seal the deal and get to the point now that Jack was aggrevated enough.

"Fine," he said, taking the next plate from him. "You know what, have your 'just friends' arrangement."

"Thank you,"

"But you have to do something if you never want me to question it again,"

Now, there was a proposition that was worth it. "Anything,"

Charlie checked his watch. "It's December 25th...8.23pm. You have to go one year without falling in love with Kate. Twelve months, starting now. You cannot fall in love with her."

Jack nodded immediately. "I can do that."

Charlie grinned. "It's not as easy as you might think."

"It will be," he assured him.

After all, you can't fall in love with someone again when you've never stopped loving them in the first place.

----

Upstairs in Aaron's new room, Kate and Claire put Aaron down in the crib. They smiled as they watched him finally close his eyes, and remained there speaking in whispers.

"He's so adorable, Claire," Kate cooed.

"I know," the mother grinned. "I can't believe I was planning to spend my life without him."

Kate looked up and smiled at her. "You did the right thing changing your mind."

"If it wasn't for you, I might not have had the chance to," she pointed out. "You kept calm when I was giving birth, I certainly wasn't calm."

"Well, you were so terrified that you blanked out how jittery I was. I was delivering a baby in a jungle," she remembered.

"I was giving birth without painkillers...or a doctor!"

Kate held back a laugh so that she didn't wake Aaron up, but couldn't stop a grin. "Okay, you win there."

They were silent for a moment, and then Claire nudged her shoulder. "So, how are things going here with Jack?"

She groaned inwardly. "Is this going to be about the 'L' word that I mentioned once?" she remembered.

"You mentioned it first," she pointed out.

"I was upset, Claire," she explained. "And sick, my head was all over the place and..."

"And you mistook your reaction to a male best friend's comfort as something more," Claire finished for her. "It happens. You're only human, Kate. All mixed-sex best friends have to deal with it at some point."

"Have you ever dealt with it?" Kate asked.

"Oh, yeah."

"And how did that turn out?"

"With me giving birth on an island because the bastard abandoned us."

Kate looked at her curiously. "Thomas was your best friend?"

She nodded, looking down at her son. "Once."

Her eyebrows raised. "Wow. I'd never have thought."

She nodded again, but then shook herself. She didn't like to think of Thomas now that she had Charlie. "Anyway...what I really meant was are you settling in okay here?"

"Of course I am," she answered, as if it were no other possibility.

"And just so I can check, you haven't slept with Jack yet?"

Kate shook her head. "Why do people keep asking me if I'm sleeping with Jack?"

Claire shrugged innocently. "I'm sorry, Kate, but let's face it...you two having a 'just friends' arrangement is the most ridiculous idea in the entire world."

"No, it's not."

"People at my engagement party who had never met you thought that you were married," Claire pointed out.

"We don't act like we're married..." Kate defended.

"You totally do,"

"We totally don't."

Claire counted off her points on her fingers. "You bicker like a married couple, you do everything together...look how much he takes care of you! You cook him dinner for when he gets home from work, and his mother thinks he's in love with you!"

"Well, that last one's your fault," she pointed out.

"No, it's Jack's fault for making such a public display of depression when you were in prison."

"He's my best friend, he just missed me," she assumed.

"He's in love with you."

"Claire, you're going to wake Aaron up," she warned her friend.

She waved it off, however. "He can sleep through a thunderstorm. He spent the first year of his life on an island, remember?"

Kate looked at her surely. "Jack and I are just friends," she said clearly.

"Prove it."

"How?"

"If you can go an entire year without falling in love with Jack, we'll never have this conversation again," she challenged her.

Kate raised an eyebrow. "Promise?" she asked hesitantly.

Claire nodded. "Absolutely."

----

For the rest of the night, Jack and Kate couldn't get their new challenges off their minds. Of course, neither of them knew that they were both thinking about the exact same thing, but it didn't stop them thinking about it constantly. There were so many stolen glances that it was a miracle neither of them caught each others, or perhaps they were so wound up in their own thoughts that they didn't notice the other mirroring their behaviour.

Eventually, the television went off, and Claire stood up, stretching as the clock chimed midnight. "Well, I think I've had enough wine and cake to last me a week, so I'm going to turn in," she said.

Kate laughed. "I agree."

Jack and Charlie sprawled further into the now vacant couches. "Looks like it's just the men, then," Jack said, as he reached for the wine to refill their glasses.

Claire, however, had other plans, and gently cuffed her fiance round the head. "Oh no, you don't...you're coming with me."

"And I'm not nursing your hang over in the morning as well as my own," Kate told Jack, taking his wine glass and putting it down on the coffee table. Drunkenly, Jack looked at it as if he had just lost his greatest friend.

"But...that's not fair," he complained. "Charlie's got someone to go to bed with and I haven't!"

Kate patted him on the head sympathetically, yet she couldn't have been more condesending if she had tried. "Jack, honey, if that's the reason you want to stay up and get drunk, we'll just draw a face on your pillow and you can hug that when you go to sleep."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Funny."

"I know," she said brightly. "I'm hilarious, now come on."

The four of them made their way to their bedrooms, but at the foot of the stairs Charlie looked over his shoulder, mainly to make sure that he definitely wasn't the only one being dragged off to bed, and a look of excitement crossed over his face. Like a schoolgirl, he screamed a little.

"LOOK!"

Everyone stopped, and followed to where he was pointing. Jack and Kate were standing right beneath the mistletoe.

"You've gotta kiss!" Charlie demanded.

Jack laughed. "You're insane," he said, hoping that his cheeks burning was just down to the wine.

"It's tradition," Claire agreed, tugging on her elder brother's sleeve like she would have done if the pair were perhaps twenty years younger. "We said we'd give Aaron a traditional Christmas..."

"Aaron's asleep," Kate pointed out.

"Yes, but the whole house aura will be untraditional if you two don't kiss and then he'll never understand the true meaning of Christmas and become a juvinile delinquent who goes around setting people's decorations on fire and then he'll join a gang and do drugs and he'll end up being some kind of Columbian drug lord but with an Australian accent and a tan!" Claire explained - miraculously, in one breath.

Jack and Kate exchanged confused glances. "So you're saying that unless we kiss while my nephew is fast asleep, he'll be messed up for life?"

"Yes," she said simply.

Surrendering, Jack and Kate turned to face each other. Slowly, they leaned in to one another, and while both of them were clearly doing it out of force, it was clear to see a sincere look in each others eyes even if it was hidden deep beneath the day's alcohol intake. As they neared each others lips, they realised how ridiculous their new challenges were, and how impossible it was going to be to stick to them...who were they kidding, they loved each other!

BANG!

Jack's hand slipped off the stair rail he'd been steadying himself off, and he lunged forward, missing Kate's lips completely. Phsyical contact became so much less meaningful than Charlie and Claire had planned, as the pair headbutted each other, and were left nursing what would be the marvellous beginnings of a bruise first thing in the morning.

"Ow," Kate grumbled, with a slight hiccup.

Talk about killing the moment.


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen:

Just standing outside the club felt like a bad idea to Kate. Sawyer had invited them all to a New Years Eve party at the venue and they'd decided to go, if only to celebrate in style, as opposed to the campfire gathering they'd had last year at what they assumed to be midnight. They'd only remembered it was New Years Eve when the sun went down on another day, but this year, it would be different. Namely because they were freezing cold, clutching their jackets around them like lifelines. Sometimes, she missed the beach way too much to be healthy.

"We're too old for this," she grumbled.

"You're twenty-eight," Jack pointed out to her.

"We're too old to go clubbing," she insisted.

"No, we're not," he assured her. "And we're not clubbing, we're at a party."

"At a club," she reminded him.

"Okay, we're clubbing," he surrendered. "But we're not too old."

She sighed. "You sure I dressed right?" she checked.

"You look perfect," he assured her for the tenth time.

"Are you sure?" she asked again, tempted to open her jacket and check her outfit again, but it was too cold to go near the zipper. "Sawyer said the theme was glamorous…"

"And if you were anymore glamorous you'd have glitter in your veins," he comforted.

She still grumbled. "I think the last time I was this naked in public was the day I was born."

"Kate, it's just a party," he said, pulling her down the street even faster than they were already going. "Now come on, we're already late!"

-------

Inside the club, Kate instantly felt out of place. If it wasn't for the fact that her friends were there, she'd have made some excuse and left. She wasn't comfortable on the dance floor with all the people (most of whom she didn't know) crushing in on her all in the name of dancing, but she did dance for a few songs she knew with Jack. After a while, she needed space to breathe, however, and made her way over to the bar to sit down for a while. Jack stayed on the dance floor with an increasingly drunken Desmond, Charlie and Hurley. She sat at the bar for a while before she was joined by another man, one she didn't know or recognise. He stood out from the others around her with his dark hair and striking blue eyes…striking to say the least.

"Hi," he grinned at her.

"Hi," she replied back.

"I'm David," he introduced. "One of James' friends."

"James…" she trailed off, but then realised. "You're one of Sawyer's friends?"

"Yeah, probably one of the only ones who won't call him Sawyer," he nodded. "I've known him since we were kids."

"Wow," she mused.

"Yeah, impressive, I know. You're Kate, right?" he assumed.

"However did you guess?"

He grinned. "James tells me you're not the party animal people expect you to be, and you're the only one who doesn't look like you're enjoying yourself in here."

"You're very observant," she noted.

David shrugged. "I don't like the club scene much, either," he related. "Never had any in the small town where James and I grew up."

"You don't have the same accent as Sawyer," she commented.

"Went to college in New York, lived out there for ten years," he explained.

She looked at him strangely. "You went to college and you never went clubbing?"

"A few times, but I never enjoyed it," he admitted. "Seeing as we're both miserable in here, you mind if I buy you a drink?" he offered.

"Thank you, but I've already got one," she showed him.

"In that case, do you mind keeping me company?"

At that moment, she realised what was happening. "Are you hitting on me?" she asked incredulously.

He looked at her innocently. "Do you want me to hit on you?"

"That depends," she said.

"On what?"

"On whether you came over here because you thought I was attractive or because you were generally interested in talking to me," she told him.

He stepped back, holding up his hands. "I'm afraid my hands are torn there," he admitted. "I have to say I did have to come and talk to you face to face just to see if the top you're wearing had a front to it, because you seem to have lost the back of it…" Kate laughed, actually blushing. "and having talked to you, you seem like an interesting girl."

"Is that so?" she asked.

"Well, I'm keeping my fingers crossed," he smirked. "You haven't given me your number yet, but you haven't told me to get lost yet, either."

"Perhaps I'm just being mysterious," she suggested playfully.

"I like that in a girl," David smirked.

"Lucky for you," she nodded.

He leaned on the bar. "Does that mean I'm getting a phone number?" he asked.

"I haven't decided yet," she said.

"Brilliant," he grinned.

"Really?"

He nodded. "I don't want a girl who's going to throw herself at me the second I start hitting on her. If you give me your number, I want it to be because you genuinely want to," he told her.

She regarded this with a sip of her drink. "You're moving the odds in your favour."

"In that case, I should tell you that I'm definitely not planning on taking you home and sleeping with you tonight, for two reasons," he informed her.

"And what would they be?"

He held up a finger. "First of all, I don't believe in one night stands."

"Strange, considering you're friends with Sawyer," she mused. "But what's the second reason?"

He laughed, looking to his side. "The guy on the dance floor, I'm assuming is the doctor James told me about, is looking at me as if he's going to kill me just for looking at you," he pointed out. "And I'm pretty sure that by taking you home my family jewels would end up on a jar on his desk."

Kate laughed, wondering how bad an impression that would make for a paediatrician. "Jack's just my friend," she explained. "We live together."

"But you're not…?" he checked.

"We're not involved, no," she said.

David smirked. "Another odd in my favour."

"Apparently so," she grinned back.

------------

In the early hours of the morning, Jack and Kate were walking back home. Neither of them were particularly drunk as they'd spent more time dancing than drinking. Kate had been dragged off to the ladies room to have the routine interrogation from Claire (as well as Desmond's fiancée, Penny) about David. Both of them had their hands in their pockets, feeling the cold even more now.

"So, you seemed to enjoy yourself considering you didn't even want to come out," Jack pointed out to her.

She laughed. "Okay, you were right," she admitted.

"Can you say that a bit louder, I didn't quite-"

She gently punched him in the arm. "Hey, don't push it, Shepherd."

He laughed, but then feel silent. "Who was that guy you were talking to?" he asked, trying to sound casual about it.

"David," she said. "He knew Sawyer when they were kids."

"One of Sawyer's friends?" he asked.

"Yeah. Doesn't know him as Sawyer, though, he kept calling him James. I don't think I'll ever get used to that."

"You guys seemed to hit it off," he noticed, rather begrudgingly.

"He gave me his number," Kate admitted.

Jack's heart began to pound. His eyebrows raised, but he managed not to fly into a jealous rage. "Wow."

"What?" she asked.

"You gonna call him?" he asked.

"I don't know," she admitted. "He likes me, and he wants to see me again."

"Do you like him?" he asked her

"I guess…" she trailed hesitantly.

"You don't sound very confident," he noticed.

She shrugged. "I don't want to throw myself into something and it end badly," she admitted.

"Then don't throw yourself into it," he suggested. "Take things slowly, enjoy things without pressure for a while and then see where things are heading."

She bit her lip. "So, you think I should call him?" she asked.

Jack was silent for a moment. He didn't want her to date another guy, but he couldn't tell her that because of the deal he made with Charlie. "Yeah," he said, as much as it pained him to say it. "I mean, if he likes you, you never know."

Kate was also quiet, taking his words in for a moment. Jack's lack of reaction clearly proved that her deal with Claire meant nothing, because he wasn't in love with her as everyone suspected. Perhaps giving David a chance was the right thing. "Maybe I will go," she mused.

"Great," Jack mumbled, trying his best not to sound jealous, and failing miserably.


End file.
